A Frozen Flower
by mallowmelting
Summary: —COMPLETED— Agent Orchid has a secret. She was born with the deadly gift of destruction, and her powers are growing day by day. She must learn to master her powers before the adults who seek to kill her are able to track her down.
1. Frost

EDIT 05/25/17: Hello everyone! I've decided (yes, two years later) to finally do some revision on _A Frozen Flower_. I'll be re-uploading chapters as I revise them, so some chapters might be the old version and some might be the new version until I finish. Chapters will also be uploaded on Wattpad, AO3, and Tumblr all under the pen name elysianoriel. I'll leave the old A/Ns up for comic relief. Thanks!

A/N: This story is set in the same "world" as _Agent Olive: Before and After_. So, Olive, Oz, Oren, and Octavia's backstories are the same. However, there is a slight change regarding Olive's last partner: her old partner _was_ Todd, but when Todd was away for a few months Olive got Orchid as a temporary partner and mentor, since Orchid was new to the squad.

* * *

 **I  
FROST**

* * *

 **~ Orchid ~**

Orchid jumped in front of the passing agents and pointed to the floor. "STOP!" she shouted. "Dinosaurs crossing."

"We don't have all day, Orchid," Olive sighed.

"Seriously? Come on," her partner added. "Is that all of them?"

Orchid gave one last sigh, then jumped up from the floor. " _Now_ you can go."

She turned to her dinosaurs. "All right, you three. You've been so badly behaved during our walk, we're going straight home." She picked up the dinosaurs and began to march down the corridor to the dinosaur room.

 _Stupid Otto, always thinking I'm a child._ The thought slipped out before she could contain it. Horrified, she stopped in her tracks and clapped her hand over her mouth. Such thoughts were dangerous. _Please, please, don't come…_

But Orchid's pleas went unanswered. Blinding pain shot into her temples. Reeling, she fell to the ground.

 _Fight it, fight it!_ She repeated Ms. O's words in her mind.

Tears streaming down her face, Orchid scrambled to her feet. But the world was already swaying—a sign she was about to lose control.

 _I need to get to the dinosaur room!_

She began to sprint towards the door. She wrenched it open and caught a glimpse of her forgotten dinosaurs, lying in a lonely heap on the floor. _I'll get you as soon as this is over,_ she promised before slamming the heavy door shut.

The colors of the dinosaur room swam into Orchid's eyes. Trees turned electric blue and pulsed like the lights in a nightclub. A dragonfly's wings grew to ten times their normal size. Then the creature flopped to the ground, brown and lifeless.

 _Fight it, fight it,_ her dinosaurs chanted in Ms. O's voice.

"I'M TRYING!" she shouted, even though she knew Ms. O couldn't hear her. "I'm… _trying_ …"

She slumped against a wall, her energy sapped. The room flashed with a blinding light, then turned black and white. The world finally spun and twirled out of her reach, and Orchid was whirled into darkness. That was all she remembered.

* * *

Orchid opened her eyes. The skylight filtered in a cool yellow light, illuminating the dust particles floating downward. It was the calm after the storm. She was half-content to stay like that, lying on her back and watching the dusty sunrise. But she forced herself to get up and take in her surroundings.

Trees were scattered on the ground, plastic branches torn from their trunks. The wallpaper had been ripped from the walls, revealing stained whitewash underneath. A dinosaur lay on the ground, its neck severed by all but one wire.

Orchid collapsed back onto the ground and started to sob. She had failed again.

* * *

 **~ Olive ~**

"What are you staring at?" Olive followed Otto's gaze. "Orchid?"

"I'm not staring at her," he mumbled. "I'm just looking at her for a really long time."

"Well then, why are you looking at her for a really long time?"

Otto turned to Olive. "Is Orchid's partner invisible like Oz?"

Olive was taken aback. "Um, no. She doesn't have a partner."

"Why not? Everybody else does."

 _You are not to tell anyone, ever, what happened that day._ Ms. O's words echoed in Olive's head.

"Um, there… isn't anyone available."

Otto looked at her skeptically. "But she's been partnerless since I joined the squad. And we've had new recruits. Why doesn't Ms. O give her a partner?"

Olive shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. "I don't know. I guess Ms. O has her reasons."

"But why would Ms. O keep someone alone for that long? Maybe she forgot about her. You know what? Let me go up to her office and remind her. Nobody should have to be partnerless." He got up from his desk and started to walk towards the staircase.

"NO!" The word came out louder than Olive meant it to. She winced as the whole squad turned to look at her.

"Otto, you don't want to do that. Orchid—she just likes to work alone, okay? And I don't think she'd want you interfering with her personal business."

Otto sat back down slowly. "Okay," he said. "I won't ask. But there's something about Orchid you're not telling me, isn't there?"

"No! No, nothing at all."

She was suddenly very interested in filing her paperwork in the right drawers. Other than Ms. O, Olive was the only agent at the squad who knew Orchid's secret. Ms. O didn't like to talk about it, or how the training was going.

"Orchid's not your partner, so stop interrogating me!" she'd snapped the last time Olive had asked about her. "Now go away! There are some laser chickens in the town square! What are you waiting for?" She had hurried away with Ms. O's final "GO!" following her.

"Olive!" Otto waved a hand in front of her face. "Earth to Olive, your badge is ringing."

Disoriented, Olive looked down and saw that her badge was indeed ringing. "Go for Olive," she said, holding it to her ear.

"WHY DID YOU NOT PICK UP?!" Ms. O shouted into Olive's ear. "I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THE LAST TEN SECONDS!"

"Sorry, Ms. O. What's happening?"

"Get to the park! NOW! And don't bring Otto!"

"Why shouldn't I bring Otto?"

"Just GO!"

Feeling uneasy, Olive rushed out of the room.

* * *

 **~ Oprah ~**

"WHERE WERE YOU?" Oprah growled at her best agent. "This is urgent! I don't want you treating this like a case."

"It's—not a case?" she said, confused. "Then what's the problem?"

"What's the problem?" Oprah repeated incredulously. "For odd's sake, look around you!"

She sighed inwardly. Olive could be so wrapped up in something that she couldn't see what was right under her nose. She needed to fix that if Olive was ever going to become Ms. O.

"Whoa! Was it a tornado?" said Olive, looking around at the destroyed park.

"No, Olive," sighed Oprah. "It was Orchid."

"So I'm guessing her training isn't going too well?"

She sighed again, for the second time in five minutes. She really was getting too young for this.

"Don't tell her this, Olive, but Orchid isn't going to get any better. All she's going to get is stronger. She destroyed this park without ever touching it. She was in her dinosaur room the whole time—I was watching on the security cameras."

Olive didn't seem to know what to say. She just nodded. "That's unfortunate."

The two agents sat there on the bench for a while, together with their thoughts. Oprah loved Orchid like she loved all her agents. She wanted the best for her, yet she feared what would happen once she became untrainable. She remembered that moonless night five years ago, when she had found Orchid standing over a dead body. Oz had been with her then. He had whispered to kill her, and Oprah had been about to… but she had been too softhearted. Could one life saved justify a world lost? That was the kind of question Oz would have known the answer to, before he had had his soul death. But now, Oprah had no idea how much Oz remembered anymore, if he still remembered anything at all.

"What did you bring me here for?" Olive finally said.

She snapped back into business mode at once. "I thought you could give me advice. I guess I was wrong." She stood up and began to stride toward the tube entrance. "Call Agent O'Hara. I want a juice box ready for me the moment I step foot in headquarters!"

* * *

 **~ Otto ~**

When Olive was gone and he didn't have any work to do, Otto liked to wander around headquarters. This happened often enough that Otto could truthfully say he knew where all the important parts of Odd Squad were. That is, he knew the quickest paths to the doughnut room, the cookie room, the cupcake room, and the break room.

Since Olive had left without notice, Otto made a beeline straight to the doughnut room. He was about to pull the door open when he noticed Orchid disappearing around a corner.

Remembering his conversation with Olive, curiosity overcame him. Otto looked mournfully at the doughnut room, then started following Orchid. He could get a snack later, but this couldn't wait. Soon Orchid would be too far away to follow.

 _Why are you snooping?_ Olive's voice trickled into his head. _It's wrong to snoop. Don't you have work to be done?_

 _Work can wait,_ he rebutted. _Orchid can't._

 _Why are you so obsessed about Orchid? Do you want to be her partner? Are you putting her over me?_

Otto picked up his pace, infuriated. _I don't know what's deluded you. You were never first to me, Olive. I have a family, you know!_

 _Of course. A family who you lie to, every day. A family that doesn't know the real you, the Otto who pretends to go to school each day but really comes to headquarters to work with—guess who? Me!_

Otto swiped at the air, then slapped himself in the head.

 _By the time you decide to leave, I'll mean more to you than your little family ever did. Just wait and see. When agents leave the squad, they leave changed. They're never truly part of their family again, because this is their home. We are their family. They'll be filled with an intense longing for Odd Squad. But they can't come back, because they took an oath. The longing infects their minds and poisons their hearts. It eventually drives them insane—_

Otto clapped his hands over his ears. "STOP IT! STOP IT!"

"Otto? Um, are you okay?"

A few yards away, Oscar was frowning at him.

"Oscar! I need to find Orchid."

"Orchid? She just passed by. I think she was headed for the break room. Why are you looking for her?"

"Oh, um, no reason."

He raised an eyebrow. "Tell the truth, Otto."

"Why are you interested in what I'm doing?"

He shrugged. "I'm bored."

"I wanted to figure out why she doesn't have a partner."

"Wow! That's a great idea!" Oscar pulled a Sherlock Holmes-esque cap from inside his lab coat.

Otto sighed. There was no getting out of this one.

* * *

 **~ Orchid ~**

As soon as she entered the break room, every agent in the room suddenly collapsed and covered their ears.

"What's going on?" she said.

The door to the break room suddenly flung open. Ms. O stood in the doorway.

"Orchid! In my office! Now! And close the door behind you!"

She walked away without another word. Orchid thought it best to follow her.

* * *

Ms. O collapsed into her office chair, holding her temples. "No, O'Donahue, no," she muttered. In her normal voice, she shouted, "Orchid! Six juice boxes! Stat!"

Orchid hurried to the juice bar. When she got back, her arms full of juice, Ms. O was still murmuring to herself.

"Over a century together, O'Donahue. That's more than any agent here today can say. How could you turn on me like this?" A pause. "I loved you, O'Donahue. And you're telling me that after all those years, I meant nothing to you? Nothing?"

"Ms.… Ms. O?"

That seemed to snap Ms. O back to her senses. "Shut up, O'Donahue! You're not real!"

She turned to Orchid. "I don't want you working in the office anymore. From now on you're confined to the dinosaur room unless I call for you. No exceptions."

Orchid was shocked. "But why? What have I done?"

"Nothing, Orchid. You've just grown, and there's nothing you can do to stop that. But your presence is making people hear voices. Fabricating heartbreaks. I can't let this happen, or everybody who's hearing _my_ voice in their heads is going to burn down headquarters. It's for your own good, Orchid. Now go. I'll bring your dinner down in two hours."

"Not Oksana?"

"Definitely not Oksana. Go."

The tears that hung in her eyes finally spilled over, and Orchid ran to the newly repaired dinosaur room, leaving a trail of anger in her wake.

* * *

A/N: I'm juggling several stories right now, and these chapters are a bit longer than I usually do, so expect an update every 3-4 weeks.


	2. Thaw

A/N: This chapter in the story takes place a few days after the episode "6:00-6:05", so Otto doesn't know about Odd Todd yet. Just a heads up. Enjoy!

* * *

 **II  
** **THAW**

* * *

 **~ Olive ~**

 _Calm down. Don't panic. Keep up your guard._

Olive stood in front of the dinosaur room, trying to calm her nerves. She imagined the voices of all the people close to her—Ms. O, Otto, Todd, everyone—and let them fill her thoughts. Now she was guarded from anything Orchid might accidentally throw at her.

"Orchid?" Olive cracked open the door to her former partner's dinosaur room. "Can I come in?"

"Sure!" Orchid smiled at her sweetly, with a dinosaur in her arms. "I'm _soooooo_ bored in here. Nothing ever happens!"

Olive was taken aback. "You're okay? You're not angry, or sad or—anything?"

"I'm both, but just because I'm alone all the time now doesn't mean I can let it go. I was thinking that if I figured out how to stop it, Ms. O will let me out again."

"Oh! Um, okay. Well, I was just wondering if you wanted to talk. I had some ideas for your training. Do you want to see if they work?"

"Does Ms. O know you're here, Sherman?"

 _What on earth does that mean?_ "I'm Olive."

"I know. Does Ms. O know you're here?"

"Not exactly…"

"Well, Sherman, Ms. O has stopped my training, so you should probably leave before she finds out you were here."

"Why are you calling me Sherman?!"

"Does it matter, Sherman?" She stroked the head of one of her dinosaurs. "Don't listen to Sherman," she murmured. "She doesn't understand."

Olive had been trying to put up with it, but she couldn't take it anymore. "Quit calling me Sherman! I can't deal with this anymore. Your little dinosaurs—you know they can't actually move and talk, right?"

"They can too!" Orchid's face was getting red. For a moment, Olive faltered… but now that she had started, she couldn't stop.

"No, they can't! Stop kidding yourself. It's childish, and you're just a foolish little girl!"

Orchid's face was a dark purple now, and her eyes stared without seeing. Olive suddenly realized what she had done—she'd only ever seen that face once before.

And if Orchid truly was getting stronger, well, the best option would be to—

As trees began to topple and the skylight exploded in a shower of glass, Olive ran.

In her unguarded state, focused only on getting out of that place as fast as she could, the first voice entered Olive's head.

 _Remember me?_

* * *

 **~ Otto ~**

The agent, hardly more than a blur, ran past, almost knocking Otto and Oscar over.

"Olive?" Otto wondered at the brown ponytail disappearing around a corner. "What's she up to?"

"Do you want to follow her?" asked Oscar. Otto gave him a look. He seemed way too enthusiastic about the whole detective thing. It was kind of creeping him out.

"Um, I actually have paperwork to do, so I'm just going to do that. And listen to Soundcheck. I'm just going to do my paperwork while listening to Soundcheck…"

He backed away from Oscar, right into… Oren and Olaf. "Aaah!"

"Out of our way, _agents_." Only Oren could make the word "agents" sound like an insult. "Olaf and I have some _very_ important work to be doing."

"So do we!" said Oscar. "We're trying to find out why Orchid doesn't have a partner!"

Otto groaned.

"Orchid?" Oren was suddenly interested. "As it just so happens, _I_ know why she doesn't have a partner. I can tell you, but we'll have to go somewhere where no one can hear us."

* * *

"So, what's with Orchid?" asked Otto, his eyes drifting around the dusty room. It was only natural that Olaf had a room in headquarters dedicated to potatoes, but… _weird_.

Oren leaned closer and lowered his voice. "Oz told me all about her. She's a murderer."

Otto and Oscar gasped in shock.

"A murderer? Orchid?" said Otto, disbelieving. "But she seems so… no, she's not really normal. I could see her murdering someone. Carry on."

"The year was 2003," continued Oren, with a mystical edge to his voice, "when a baby was born—"

"The baby was Orchid, right?" said Otto.

Oren glared at him. "Stop interrupting. Yes, the baby was Orchid, and she was born with the power of an awake—"

"An awake? What's that?" This time it was Oscar who interrupted before realizing his mistake.

"Well, since you two still have the attention span of two-month-old _babies_ , let me just skip to the end! She stabbed a guy to death, and then she woke up, realized what she'd done, and tried to run away, but Ms. O and Oz caught her. According to Oz, she should have been killed the moment Ms. O saw her. She's an aberration of nature—she was never meant to be alive. And she's going to destroy the world. There! That's it! See you later, _agents_!" Oren got up and stormed out of the room.

Oscar looked at Otto. "I am so confused."

* * *

 **~ Orchid ~**

Orchid stared at the plate of food Ms. O had brought her an hour ago. Spaghetti with spaghetti. Again. Couldn't Oksana cook up _something_ different?

On the first day of her confinement, Orchid had eaten the whole dish. On the second day, she'd eaten half. On the third day, she had only picked at it.

Now, on the fourth day, all Orchid could bring herself to do was stare at it.

Orchid thought that maybe if she stared at her spaghetti for long enough, something unusual or out-of-the-ordinary would happen. But nothing had happened.

Yet.

 _It will, Orchid,_ one of her dinosaurs encouraged from his grassy perch. _It will._

"Thanks, Donna. But I don't think so." Orchid turned her attention back to the plate.

 _Come on, come on, please, can't something happen? It's so boring here, and I'm so lonely—come on, little spaghetti, start dancing around the room or something—come on, spaghetti, come on, come on—_

The plate burst into flames.

"Aaah!" she exclaimed as the turf surrounding the plate caught on fire. "What do I do, what do I do, what do I do…"

Then she felt the oddest sensation run up through her arms. It was like ice-cold water was flowing through her veins. She shook her arms to get rid of the feeling, and water sprayed out of her hands.

"Whoa," she said in amazement as the fire sputtered and died out. "I didn't know I could do that."

But when she tried, Orchid couldn't get herself to perform any more miracles for the rest of the day.

* * *

 **~ Oscar ~**

Oscar approached Octavia's desk, where she was sketching a platypus in her notebook.

"Hey, Octavia! How's everything going?"

At the sound of his voice, Octavia jumped up from her desk, pencils and paper flying everywhere. "What? Who? Where are you?"

"It's me, Oscar."

"Oh." Octavia settled back into her chair. (Her super comfy desk chair—Oscar couldn't help being a little bit jealous.) "Hey, Oscar! Have you seen my partner?"

"Um, I was actually going to ask you that."

"But you don't have a partner."

"No, I was wondering where _your_ partner was. You know, Oz."

"Ohhh. Sorry, I don't know. But—"

Before she could finish her sentence, an invisible hand knocked her tissue box to the ground.

"Hmm. Did I do that?" Octavia wondered as she put the box back into place. Hardly a second passed before it fell to the floor again.

Oscar stared hard into the empty air next to Octavia's desk. Sure enough, he could see the faint shimmer of a human outline. "Oz, is that you?"

"Geez!" Oz settled into the other desk chair. "Took you guys long enough. I've been standing here the whole morning! What did you want to visit me for, Oscar? Have you invented a gadget that can make me visible again?"

"Sorry, not yet," Oscar responded, a little guiltily. He had been meaning to invent one for months, but more important things always seemed to get in the way. "Actually, Oren said something that, um, made me think—"

"What!?" Oz jumped up from the chair. "He said he wouldn't tell anyone! And I am _retired_ from that job, okay? I'm not risking another soul death!"

Oscar was confused. "What are you talking about? I meant Orchid."

"Orchid… she's the murderer, right? The _fille d'étoile_ —ugh, I wasn't supposed to say that!"

 _Fille d'étoile_. Oscar felt like he'd heard the phrase before. He had no idea what it meant, but he felt he was one step closer to his answer. " _Fille d'étoile_? What's that?"

"None of your business." Oscar felt Oz bump past him. Then he heard his retreating footsteps.

" _Fille d'étoile_ ," Oscar repeated. The name had a sinister feel to it, as if it was something evil. And if being one had driven Orchid to kill someone, it must be.


	3. Blessed and Cursed

A/N: Hello readers, I have gotten some reviews on my other Odd Squad fanfic, _Agent Olive: Before and After_ asking me to update this fanfic, _A Frozen Flower_. I want to make it clear that these reviews are  not related to _Before and After_ , and therefore if you have something to say about _A Frozen Flower_ , please PM me or review on this story.

Please be patient for updates. I am currently working on 4 different stories, including this one, so updates might not come as often as everybody would like. I am going to be away all of next week, and most likely will not have any time to write, so please be patient for Part Four and know that writing a good fanfic takes time.

Thanks for your consideration, and enjoy Part Three! I think you'll start to see some of the ties to _Frozen_ I put in this story.

* * *

 **III**  
 **BLESSED AND CURSED**

* * *

 **~ Oprah ~**

Oprah pulled open the door to Orchid's dinosaur room with both hands, expertly balancing a steaming plate of spaghetti on her foot. She stepped inside and reached forward to replace Orchid's old dinner—that is, the smoking, charred remains of what was once Orchid's dinner.

"Orchid…" Oprah was afraid to ask the question. "What happened to your spaghetti?"

"Ms. O!" With surprising enthusiasm, Orchid leapt down from a high shelf. Oprah wondered how she had gotten up there. Could it have been—no, it must have been just Orchid. Never underestimate the strength of one bored girl.

Orchid landed right in front of Oprah. "Ms. O, the most _amazing_ thing happened yesterday. I stayed up all night thinking about it!"

Orchid told her all about the burning spaghetti and the water that had come out of her fingers. "It's the first time I did something magical while still being conscious! Ms. O, honestly, I think I'm getting better! Can we start training again?"

That was just like Orchid, getting straight to the point. If this news had come six months ago, Oprah would have been jubilant. But now, with Orchid's powers already beginning to come into full effect, this 'miracle' was almost certainly a foretelling of doom. What if she saw something odd or dangerous in the future and another accident happened? The results could be disastrous. Oprah knew how dangerous an angry or panicked _fille d'étoile_ could be—she had had one too many ill-planned lunches with the Featherites.

"Have any more of these—miracles—happened?"

Orchid shook her head solemnly. "I was trying all night, but I couldn't get it to happen again. That's why you need to help me."

"Orchid," Oprah began, wondering how to say what she needed to say, "remember the Featherites?"

She nodded solemnly. "You wore a nest on your head and talked in a crazy language all day to make them happy."

"Um… yes, those were the Featherites. And—remember the volcano? The one that erupted because we had the wrong number of chairs?"

"Of course I do. Where are you going with this?"

Under Orchid's impatient glare, Oprah felt her carefully planned explanation dissolve and melt into an incoherent mess. Desperately, she tried to grasp onto whatever was left in her head.

"Agent Orchid, no more training, or else—or else the volcano will erupt again!"

 _Well, that was a disaster._ Oprah set down the spaghetti on a shelf. "And I want that plate empty when I come back tomorrow. You have to eat something, you know."

"Yap, yap." Orchid leaned against the wall and rolled her eyes. "Dream on, Sherman."

Oprah gritted her teeth to suppress a growl of fury. Orchid needed to learn some respect. If she had been a normal agent, she'd have been fired years ago. But she couldn't let someone like Orchid loose in the world, and Oprah had to admit she was fond of the young agent.

"See you tomorrow," she said, then left for her office. She had a lot of juice boxes and a lot of thinking to go through.

* * *

 **~ Oz ~**

Oz thumbed through the agent files in Ms. O's office. Even after all these years, it still felt weird to move things without seeing his hands. He skipped a bit and found the section he was looking for. Agent Ophelia, Agent Opie, and… Agent Oren. He frowned. Where was Orchid's file? Maybe it had been misplaced. Methodically, he began searching through the whole filing cabinet.

He was about a quarter of the way through when something slid off Ms. O's desk and landed with a _thump_ on the floor. Oz turned to look. It was another file, its contents spilled out onto the carpet.

Abandoning his search, Oz scooped up all the papers in his arms and sat down at the juice bar. He could see why this file wasn't with the others—Ms. O had just added to it. At the top of the pile of papers was Ms. O's handwriting, written on what looked like an unfolded paper airplane. It said:

 _April 7, 2015, 10:23 a.m. Going to the dinosaur room. Update later._

Oz was tempted to glean the note for any memory attached to it, but he stopped himself. He couldn't use his powers again, ever. Or he'd have another soul death.

 _What if I'm wrong? What if Orchid isn't_ d'étoile _?_ he thought. _But then again, what if I'm right? What if I find something in this file I don't want to know?_ He slammed the file shut. "AGENT ORCHID" was printed on the front in bold red lettering. _What am I doing? This is crazy._

Oz heard Ms. O slurping the last dregs out of her juice box before he saw her come through the door. He grabbed the file and ducked behind the juice bar.

Ms. O stomped to the juice bar and threw her box onto the floor, almost hitting Oz in the head. He crouched lower and noticed that the floor was _littered_ with juice boxes—even more than usual. Ms. O must have had a particularly hard day.

She sat down heavily and grabbed another juice. She pulled her specially made purple straw out of her pocket and jabbed it into the juice box, but missed. She tried again, and again, missing the little hole at the top each time. She began to hammer the juice box, poking it with harder and harder strokes, until finally a hole in the side popped open. Juice gushed out of the box like blood from a wound. Ms. O threw the straw to the ground.

"What am I doing?" she said to herself. "This is crazy."

Ever so quietly, Oz reopened Orchid's file. He had to know more.

He shuffled through years of notes scribbled by Ms. O detailing Orchid's training. The words blurred before his eyes until finally he found a single, fragile sheet of lined paper. The first entry in Orchid's file.

 _Found a little girl on the corner between 1st and 2nd. She's seven years old and_ d'étoile _, and probably awake as well. Update later._

So he had been right all along. He took a look at the date: May 15, 2003. Almost twelve years, then. Orchid's powers should have already developed to their full potency; the world should have been in deadly peril. Why hadn't her powers emerged yet?

Oz peeked over the juice bar to see Ms. O. _Of course,_ he thought. _Ms. O would do anything for Odd Squad. Even restraining a_ fille d'étoile _so much it might kill her in a few months' time._

 _Why didn't she let me help?_ he wondered in frustration. But he already knew the answer. Ms. O didn't trust him anymore. He didn't need to look inside her mind to know that. He had tried to tell her before that he was almost completely cured, but she still wouldn't let him use his powers.

He imagined Orchid, alone with the powers she had no idea how to control. An idea began to take form in his mind. It went against everything Ms. O had ever told him—to conserve his power, to not do anything rash. But Ms. O's training had weakened Orchid, and if this kept going she could destroy her. Not to mention what could happen to the world with an awake _fille d'étoile_ running rampant…

Oz felt a tingle of energy crackle through his fingers. He cast his senses out through headquarters, picking up on the thoughts of hundreds of agents. He would search and search until he found Orchid, and he would train her.

"Agent Oz is back in the game," he whispered.

* * *

 **~ Otto ~**

"Otto! Otto!" Oscar rushed over to Otto's desk, his detective hat askew on his head. "I need you to look up something for me," he gasped.

"Sure." Otto pulled his tablet out of his pocket and opened Google. "What do you want me to search?"

" _Fille d'étoile_ ," replied Oscar.

He typed it into the search box. "It's French for 'girl of the stars'."

"What else? Is there anything else about it?"

"Not much…" He scrolled through the search results. "There's an obituary."

"Whose? What does it say?" Oscar leaped forward and smushed his face against Otto's to get closer to the article.

"Lionel John Payne, 52 years old at death," Otto said. "He lived in this town his whole life, until 2010, when he died."

"What did he die of?" Oscar pushed forward and frantically scrolled down. "Here it is! Cause of death!"

"The circumstances of Grimes's death five years ago are still extremely mysterious and unknown," Otto dictated. "Ms. O (formerly Agent Oprah) of Odd Squad Precinct 13579 alone knows what happened, but has declined to release this information. Evidence shows that Grimes died of a stab wound to the chest with his own knife, sometime between 9:00 and 11:00 pm on February 2, 2010. Traces of celestial energy were found around the victim, so it is commonly accepted that the murder was committed by a _fille d'étoile_."

"That's it!" Oscar cried, jumping up. "That's Orchid! That's her murder victim! Read more, read more!"

"There's not much after this," Otto said, skimming the rest of the article. "He's survived by his brother and an adopted daughter named Till. And that's it."

"Ergh!" Oscar gritted his teeth in frustration. "Come on!"

Taking Otto's hand and practically dragging him up the stairs. "Maybe there's something about _filles d'étoile_ in Orchid's file."

"But all the files are in Ms. O's office— _ohhh_." The realization dawned on him. "But you're not allowed to go into Ms. O's office without permission! You know that!"

" _You're_ not," Oscar said, stepping onto the landing and heading toward the glass double doors of Ms. O's office. "But I'm the head scientist here. I'm _kind_ of allowed to do whatever I want."

" _Who's_ allowed to do whatever they want?" Ms. O's voice behind them made both Oscar and Otto turn around at light speed.

"Oscar," she continued, "were you about to go into my office? _Without my permission?_ "

"Um…" Oscar started digging around in his coat. "I was just, um, going to drop off this… gadget in your office!" He pulled out the un-stick-man-inator.

"Oh, okay," Ms. O said nonchalantly. "Go right ahead." Then she walked away.

Otto couldn't believe that had actually worked. Oscar ducked into the office, and he was just about to follow when he heard—

"Otto! What are you doing?" Olive slammed the door to Ms. O's office and stood in front of Otto with her hands clapped over her ears, pure anger written all over her face. "You're not allowed to go into Ms. O's office without her permission!"

"She _did_ give us her permission," he explained. Olive always had to follow the rules to the letter. But it wasn't like her to get so mad at him. "She said, 'Go right—"

"I KNOW WHAT SHE SAID!" she exploded. "I heard her. She gave Oscar permission to go in, but _not you_. And if Oscar's just dropping off a gadget, why do want to go in so badly? Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Olive, are—are you okay?"

She didn't answer, just furrowed her brow angrily. As dignified as she could be while having her hands over her ears, she stalked back into the hall and disappeared into the crowd of agents.

* * *

 **~ Olive ~**

Olive sat at her desk, her head in her hands. The work day had ended, taking the noise and bustle of headquarters along with it. Even Todd had left her head, although his voice had been plaguing her for long enough that Olive knew he was just taking an extended absence.

How could she have said such things to Otto? She felt terrible about it now, but couldn't bring herself to go find her partner and apologize. And even if she could, she had no idea how to go about it. Otto wasn't an odd problem that could be fixed with one click of a button. The words she had said couldn't be taken back with the flick of a switch.

"I'm not very good with people," she mumbled to herself, sinking lower in her chair.

Finally, she mustered the courage to get up. She wondered where Otto might be. She hadn't seen him since their argument.

She decided to start where she had seen him last, in the hallway in front of Ms. O's office. With a new sense of direction, she hurried up the stairs and burst into Ms. O's office. But she was totally unprepared for the sight that lay in front of her.

One word: juice. The floor was wet and sticky with it, and on every surface half-drunken juice boxes oozed their contents, liquified fruit of all flavors spilling onto the floor. And in the center of it all was Ms. O, calmly paging through a manila folder like nothing had happened.

"Ms.—Ms. O?"

Ms. O looked up from her reading. "Olive! I knew you would come eventually. Read this with me."

Tentatively, Olive stepped through the maze of juice boxes and stood next to Ms. O.

"Sit!" Ms. O said. She waved over a chair (who waved back). The seat was flooded with apple juice.

"I think I'll stand, Ms. O," Olive declined politely.

Ms. O shrugged. "Whatever you want. Take a look at this." She showed Olive the file she was reading. On top was a black-and-white picture of a circle of trees flattened by what must have been some sort of explosion. Strangely, though, the trees in the center of the circle were completely unharmed.

"This was the Tunguska Event of 1908," Ms. O explained. "Fifteen megatons of energy—a blast a thousand times stronger than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb! Most scientists believe it was an asteroid that did it. Imagine their surprise when they didn't find a crater. And there was radiation, too. No asteroid could have done that. There are conspiracy theories about aliens and UFOs, but I think you and I know the real reason for that explosion."

"A Featherite."

"A Featherite is far from capable of making an explosion like that. This _fille d'étoile_ was awake. She was the last awake one before Orchid. She hadn't been caught for ten years; she'd been hiding in the remotest uninhabited territory of Russia. But then Oz caught some traces of energy from that area, and the best agents from every Odd Squad office banded together to terminate her."

"Oz was a _fils d'étoile_?" Olive asked in astonishment. "He never said anything about that."

"That's because I forbade him to speak of it," replied Ms. O. "He was easily the best agent this office has ever had. He was even better than Todd. He didn't have full _d'étoile_ powers—he could only detect energy, not direct it. And there wasn't a single odd problem he couldn't solve. Then he had a soul death."

"Too bad." The words escaped her before Olive could bite them back.

"It _is_ too bad. But it was inevitable. A _d'étoile_ can only use their power so much before they start losing bits of themself. I'm just thankful Oz's soul death wasn't severe. A bad one can drive a person insane, even kill them sometimes."

She put aside the photograph to reveal a picture of about a hundred Odd Squad agents, all holding gadgets and smiling. Olive recognized Ms. O immediately, right at the front next to O'Donahue. Ms. O's expression suddenly saddened.

"This was the group who set out to Tunguska," Ms. O said. "Only about half of us came back. We lost a lot of good agents that day. The _d'étoile_ put up quite a fight, and Oz only just managed to defeat her. Look, there he is right there, in between Oren and me." She pointed to a young boy, standing in the front row on Ms. O's other side. It took Olive a couple seconds to recognize the boy as Oz. She had almost forgotten what he had looked like.

"O'Donahue almost died that day," said Ms. O, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I was there watching, and I didn't do a thing. It was Oren who saved him at the last second."

Olive looked into Ms. O's face. Instead of wrinkles to show her age, invisible scars were reflected in her eyes. She had gone through so much, seen so much more than Olive might ever see. If she looked a little deeper, it was clear that one of those scars was dedicated to O'Donahue.

"You cared about him, didn't you?" Olive said. "But… what happened?"

There was a long silence. Finally, Ms. O spoke. "Yes, Olive. I was a little in love with O'Donahue. But he never loved me back. His heart would forever belong to a girl who always cut fruit into exactly equal halves." She flipped to the next page, which showed O'Donahue with his arm around Agent Olga, in front of a painted backdrop of a meadow.

"Then," she continued, "after she was fired, he had to watch her grow up, grow old, and ultimately die." She flipped through the photos faster and faster, each showing O'Donahue next to a woman who grew older with every turn of a page. Until finally, O'Donahue stood in front of that false paradise of a backdrop, alone.

"People have searched for a fountain of youth for thousands of years. Little do they know that it's been right under their noses the whole time. But what they don't know, either, is that youth is both a blessing and a curse," Ms. O proclaimed, before falling silent again.

Olive knew better than to speak, but she knew better than to leave, too. In times like these, together with their memories, Ms. O always needed her to be there. Sometimes memories are too much for one person to bear.

Half an hour passed. Ms. O remained motionless, still staring at the photograph of O'Donahue. Olive couldn't stand it any longer.

"I'm going to go, Ms. O. I need to apologize to Otto," she said quietly, moving toward the door. She was about to wrench it open when Ms. O finally spoke.

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Olive. It happens to the best of us."

Olive nodded. Then she swung the door open and stepped back out into the world.

* * *

 **~ Oprah ~**

"You called us, Ms. O?" The Featherite Ambassador stood at the entrance to headquarters, flanked by three other Featherites.

"Thank you for coming, Egret," said Oprah. "Bluejay, Flamingo, Cardinal," she added, acknowledging the other three. "As you can see, we have a serious problem."

"Extremely serious," said Egret, nodding her head in that odd, bird-like way of the Featherites. "This is all your fault. Have you forgotten Tunguska?"

"I haven't forgotten," she defended. She remembered it too well. "And what's done is done. Orchid just can't be contained anymore. I need a soul death, and I need it to happen fast."

"That's against all our rules, Ms. O," Egret replied. "The Featherites help; we don't hurt. I won't do it."

Oprah started to growl, then abruptly stopped. Better not make the Featherites mad. "Well then, what can you do? This has to be stopped!"

"The easiest option with the highest probability of success would be termination—" Egret stopped when she saw the fury on Oprah's face.

" _I will not have Orchid killed!_ "

She sighed. "There _is_ one thing I can do… where is Orchid right now?"

"In the dinosaur room. She's been confined there for the past couple weeks. Here, I'll show you."

Oprah marched down the hall, the Featherites trailing behind her. She motioned to the heavy iron door to Orchid's dinosaur room. "Here it is. Now work your magic."

Egret gave an affronted squawk, but Oprah couldn't care less. "What are you going to do?"

"I am going to seal this door. You can open it from the outside if you enter the correct security code—" she motioned to the numbered keypad on the door—"but it'll be impossible to open from the inside. At the same time, this will prevent her breakdown from spreading to the outside world, which _will_ bring the end of the world as we know it."

"And we all know that can't happen."

She stepped back to let Egret work her magic. The Featherite placed her hands on the door and murmured something under her breath. Oprah saw a blue spark of energy seal the door with a hiss.

"It's done." With a snap of her fingers, all four Featherites walked back down the hallway.

* * *

A/N: Goodness, that was a long chapter. Again, I'm going to be gone so don't expect an update for another 2-3 weeks or so. Fun fact: the Tunguska Explosion was a real event in history, and remains one of the most mysterious and unexplained natural disasters of all time! You should look it up, it's really interesting.


	4. Glass

A/N: I have two warnings to give before you start reading this chapter.

1) The final How to Train Your Dragon book, _How to Fight a Dragon's Fury_ , is coming out tomorrow on September 8. I will be completely useless for a couple days while I read it, and then I will most likely need the rest of the week (or longer) to recover, so all fanfiction writing will be halted at least for a week. AAAAAAHHHHHH I'M IN A FANDOM CRAZE AND THE LAST TIME IT WAS THIS INTENSE WAS THE WEEK BEFORE TRAINING DAY AIRED!

2) Remember that warning about reading at your own emotional risk if you're a fan of Oscar? Well, just a heads up that this chapter was what I was referring to.

* * *

 **PART 4**

 **GLASS**

* * *

 **~ Orchid ~**

As she watched the doorframe of the dinosaur room melt into the wall, Orchid began to despair.

"What's happening? What have I done to deserve this?" she shouted to the empty air.

She looked behind her at the dinosaurs, all lined up on a high shelf. "Well?"

But the dinosaurs were silent. Their eyes dropped to the floor, all of them avoiding Orchid's gaze. The reality of her predicament suddenly came crashing down on her. She had lost even her dinosaurs as company. She willed them to disappear from existence, and they did.

She was truly alone now. She felt her face grow hot with anger. Then the dizziness, the first sign that she was losing control.

 _Fight it._

 _But why?_

Ms. O, in Orchid's thoughts, didn't respond.

* * *

 **~ Oscar ~**

Oscar ran his finger down the edge of the knife he had brought. Blood beaded on his fingertip and trickled down his hand. It had never been used before, although Oscar liked to pretend he had killed the Hydraclops with it.

It was still sharp, even after all these years…

He wiped his bloodied hand on his trousers. The most important thing would be to make sure Orchid was asleep, and slept until she died. If she screamed, someone would definitely come running and find out. It would be tricky, but it could be done.

Oscar's breathing echoed through the darkened hall. He checked his watch—nearly midnight. She should be asleep by now—or would she? Did _filles d'étoile_ not need sleep? Oscar wished he knew more.

Well, he had to take the risk. He couldn't risk being caught out here by the night shift. Trying to make his footsteps as soundless as possible, he walked the few steps to the door and aimed his penlight at the security keypad. After a brief mental calculation, he punched in 3 + 8. The door unlocked with a soft click. Oscar stepped inside and closed the door behind him, careful to turn the handle before closing it to prevent any noise. Still, the metal scraping against metal made a raspy grating sound, and Oscar winced.

He turned around himself, scanning the room with his penlight. He saw Orchid immediately—she was curled up on the floor. He drew his knife and crept toward her sleeping place.

She looked so peaceful, dead asleep without a care in the world. She looked so different than the monster Oscar knew she was that he was taken aback. He almost put away his knife…

But then his common sense came back to him. Kneeling on the floor, he gently turned Orchid over and swept her hair from her neck. He readied the knife, hovering the point over the vulnerable spot at the base of her skull.

He had one chance to do this. If Orchid woke up, all would be lost. He raised the knife over his head, ready to deliver the killing strike.

And then she woke up.

Oscar scrambled backward, and at that moment his penlight battery died. The beam of white light fizzled into blackness.

Oscar cursed and ran his hand against the wall, feeling for the door handle. His left hand closed against something smooth and metal, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He made to turn it—but the handle was stuck tight. Panicking, he dropped the knife and tried to use both hands to pry open the door, aware of Orchid getting to her feet behind him.

Then the realization hit him.

 _The door couldn't be opened from the inside._ That was the whole point of this room. He should have left the door open. Now he was trapped. Dropping his knife, he curled up into a little ball, hoping the smaller he made himself, the less likely it was that Orchid would find him. It _was_ pitch-dark, after all.

Orchid's dark shape had been moving through the room this whole time. In front of Oscar's disbelieving eyes, she flickered to life. Her eyes lit up, her pupils turning an electric blue. Laser beams, searchlights, shot from her eyes.

Then slowly, she took shape. The electric blue first curled around her wrists in tendrils of smoke. It ignited her bones and spread throughout her body until her entire skeleton was illuminated. The glow from her body cast light and shadows over the whole room.

Orchid slowly walked toward Oscar, curled up on the floor. Each step echoed in the thundering silence. She stopped in front of him, her eye-beams pointing straight at his face. They were so bright Oscar had to shield his eyes.

With one hand, she pinned Oscar to the wall. With the other, she snatched up his knife from the floor. Without a word, she positioned the knife above his jugular, poised to strike.

Faced with imminent death, Oscar finally found his voice.

He let out an earsplitting yell.

* * *

 **~ Oz ~**

Oz woke up around midnight with the feeling that something was very wrong.

He tried to shake it off, but the feeling refused to leave. He got up from his bed and stepped into his slippers. It always entertained him to see his slippers disappear as he got into them, but the feeling of wrongness was so strong that he barely noticed.

He walked out of his room silently. He knew something was out of place. This feeling always happened every once in a while, when something about his life was really off. But it had never been this strong.

Oz headed down the hallway to Octavia's room. A few agents, himself and Octavia included, stayed at headquarters overnight if they had nowhere to go home to.

A light was shining under the door. Octavia was an insomniac—she usually didn't get to sleep until three or four in the morning. He could hear her humming a happy little tune. So that wasn't the problem. What else could it be?

Then he heard a scream from downstairs. Before he fully knew what he was doing, he had raced down the stairs and found himself standing outside the door to the dinosaur room.

The door was locked. He banged on it, then kicked it, trying to break it down. The door didn't yield. He wished he had real _d'étoile_ powers. He sighed in frustration—then saw the keypad on the door. Oz slapped a hand onto his head, punched in the code, and pushed open the door. Then he ran inside.

Once past the threshold, he gasped in pain as the thrumming energy contained in that room overwhelmed him. He braced himself against the wall, breathing hard.

He collected his bearings just in time to see Orchid plunge a knife into the head scientist's throat.

"NO!" he shouted. With a strength he didn't know he had, he leaped at Orchid and tackled her to the floor. Her head thwacked against the ground and knocked her unconscious.

He pulled out the bloodstained knife from Oscar's neck and tried to use his hands to staunch the bleeding. Blood bubbled out of the scientist's mouth as he fought for breath.

That was the second time in five minutes that Oz wished he was a true _fils d'étoile_. His hands were too weak, and couldn't heal the wound or stop the blood pouring from Oscar's neck and draining his life force.

He caught a glimpse of Orchid's unconscious body out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly an idea popped into his head. He looked back at Oscar, who had stopped struggling now. Anyone could see he was mere seconds from death. Oz abandoned his side and placed a bloodstained hand on top of Orchid's small one.

It took only a couple seconds. The energy that rocked him at their touch was almost too much to bear, but he grit his teeth and forced himself to stay connected.

With his whole body thrumming with Orchid's power, Oz wrenched his hand away and scrambled back to Oscar's side. He planted his hands firmly on Oscar's neck and begun to heal him.

The blue _d'étoile_ energy that was so familiar to Oz—yet strange as he hadn't seen it in so long—wreathed around Oscar's throat. It returned the freshly-spilled blood to the scientist's body. It closed up the wound in his neck. There wouldn't be a scar.

Oscar gasped awake.

"Someone's touching me," he said. "Ghost! Ghost—"

"Shut up, Oscar, it's just me!"

"Oh, Oz. Why—why are you here? I was about to—the knife—"

"Stop," said Oz, without really meaning to. A bit of energy flew from his hand and froze Oscar in his spot.

"Whoops." He was rustier than he thought. "Okay. This works. Oscar." He snapped his fingers. "You were not here, in Orchid's room, tonight. You were at home, asleep, this whole time." He drew that bit of Oscar's memory into his waiting hand and banished him from the room. Oz could only hope he wasn't so rusty that he had screwed up and sent him to the Saharan Desert. Or accidentally modified his memory so much that he forgot who he was.

A stir in the shadows made Oz turn around. He focused his attention back on Orchid's waking figure.

He laid his hand on top of hers again, and—carefully this time—drained her energy.

The blue light of her bones dissipated. Her tortured face slowly relaxed into an expression that could fool someone into thinking she was in a deep, peaceful sleep.

Oz, shuddering violently with the effort, drew out her power until not a drop remained in her veins.

Then she woke up, for real this time.

As her eyes popped open, all the lights in the room flickered on. She looked around at the seemingly empty room, then her eyes traveled down to her bloodied hands.

"What happened?"

* * *

How could he explain it to her? Oz put his hand on top of her own, to show her that he was there.

"Who's that? Who's touching me?"

"My name is Oz. I'm an agent here on the squad, but I'm invisible. I'm Octavia's partner. You know Octavia, right?"

"Of course." She paused for a moment and frowned. "Sherman?"

"No, I'm Oz."

"Whatever you say. What happened to me? I feel…" Orchid flexed her fingers. "Better than I have in ages, actually. It's so weird… did I have a soul death?"

"No, Orchid. Trust me, a soul death feels much worse than this. I just temporarily drained your—"

"You're a _fille d'étoile_ ," she interrupted.

"A _fils_ , actually. I'm a boy. And I'm not really _d'étoile_. I was only born with the ability to detect and—

"—Manipulate energy," finished Orchid. "I know."

He blinked. "How do you know that?"

"I don't know. Just a guess, I guess." Orchid shrugged, but Oz wasn't convinced.

"You read my mind. Don't worry," he added as Orchid opened her mouth to object. "You're not in trouble. Have you ever done that before?"

Orchid didn't respond. She sat back, a horrified expression on her face.

"I did that?" she whispered. Curious to what she was talking about, Oz picked up on her thoughts—and the darkness came flooding back. Her blue skeleton, sinking the knife into Oscar's throat. Oz arriving in the nick of time and knocking her away.

"It's okay! It's okay," he said, aware that Orchid had just read his thoughts again. "It was just a little setback. No big deal. To the rest of the world, nothing happened."

"But to _me_ it happened," replied Orchid. "I almost killed him. And I put you in danger, Sherman." She turned away, her back to Oz. "I've become the monster Oscar believed I was."

"That's not true, Orchid. You're not a monster. None of us are. You just need a little training. Ms. O's cooped you up in here far too long. She should have let me help," he said, a bitter edge creeping into his voice.

"She still doesn't trust you," she said. Then she ducked her head. "Sorry. That kind of snuck in."

"You can hear Ms. O's thoughts?"

"It wasn't on purpose!"

"Don't freak out, I believe you. Let's learn how to make it on purpose." Oz placed a hand on her shoulder and fed the tiniest bit of power back into her. "Let's see…" He looked around for training ideas. But the room was as bare and empty as a prison cell.

"This room used to be decorated, didn't it? Why did you get rid of everything?"

"The less stuff in this room there is, the less there is for me to destroy."

"Well, you won't be destroying anything on my watch. So, I want you to bring back the decorations. I'll help you."

Orchid closed her eyes and furrowed her brow in concentration. Oz sent her images of the dinosaur room as it had once been, and they pushed against her mind and burrowed into her brain until the thought must have been all-consuming.

Ever so slowly, the room came back to life. Turf spread out on the ground. Wallpaper unfurled onto the whitewashed walls. Dinosaurs everywhere appeared on the shelves, yawning and stretching as if they had been awoken from a long sleep.

For the first time in weeks, Orchid smiled.

* * *

 **~ Orchid ~**

As the days went by, Orchid practiced.

She practiced all day and throughout the night, until the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon, until the days and nights blended together and she couldn't tell which was which. She trained with Oz when he was there, and practiced alone when he wasn't. She practiced for hours and hours on end, only succumbing to sleep when she physically couldn't go on any longer.

For her, taking a break meant giving up. And Orchid was _not_ the kind of agent to ever give up.

And the rewards were soon obvious. After three weeks, she stopped losing control. When she had gone a full month without a mistake, she was sure she was ready to do the one thing that had fueled her persistence all this time.

She was ready to face the world again. She could stop her breakdown. She was strong enough. The real challenge would be breaking the spell on the door.

Oz had tried to break it himself using her power, but the magic was too strong. "This spell was cast by Egret, the Featherite leader," he had said. "She's very good at this. Insanely good, in fact. I don't have the power to undo it, even using your energy."

So during their training, they just had to be very, very careful to leave the door open a crack.

* * *

"Are you sure you're ready for this?"

"Surer than I'll ever be, Sherman."

Oz sighed. "I can see there's no way I'll be able to talk you out of this. I'll wait on the other side of the door in case anything… goes wrong."

Orchid rolled her eyes. Oz could be so ridiculous sometimes. "What happened to the careless agent who accidentally pointed the invisible-inator at himself?"

Oz just shook his head, smiled, and stepped beyond the threshold. But before closing the door, he stopped and turned back to face Orchid.

"Orchid, I think you should know—" He stopped short.

"Know what?"

"Never mind. Good luck."

Curious, she tried to pry into his mind. But Oz had shielded it well. She stomped hard on his foot, diverting his attention for a second—just long enough for one thought to slip out.

"What was that for!?" he shouted.

"For being such a scaredy-cat, of course. Get a move on, Sherman. I'll be out of here before you know it." Orchid grasped the handle firmly and shut the door closed.

She lay her hand on the door and took a deep breath. As she inhaled, she felt only confidence. But as she exhaled, she thought of what she had seen in Oz's mind.

He believed she was going to fail.

* * *

The spell wreathed around her—a suffocating, cold blueness that solidified into a wall of hardest steel. It was all around her, trapping her in.

She rammed her mind against the walls and reeled with pain from the impact. Collecting her bearings, she tried it again. She didn't even make a dent.

She ran her mind along the cold, smooth metal, searching for weaknesses. There were none.

Oz had been right. The Featherite leader must have been insanely good to build this.

And remembering Oz, she recalled a story he had once told her.

"The last awake _d'étoile_ before you was a girl named Masha. She lived all alone in northern Siberia at the turn of the twentieth century, and she let her powers grow raw and rampant. Dangerous.

"I was still young when she was around, and I picked up on her energy and managed to pinpoint her location. The Ms. O back then—Old Missie, we called her—rounded up the best agents from precincts all over the world. Even though I was fairly new to the squad, I was allowed to come because I was the one who found her, and so was my partner, Ottilie.

"We brought with us a single gadget—a very powerful, very deadly gadget that is the only known way to defeat an awake _d'étoile_.

"Masha was about eight years old, a little older than you, but very strong. She knew we were coming long before we came out of the closest tube entrance. She had spent eight years in the freezing mountains, letting her isolation chill her heart. So when we attacked her, she slaughtered us.

"It was dozens of us against one of her, yet she almost won. And, not to brag, but it was me who kind of saved the day. Although I'm not very proud of how I did it.

"Ottilie was being targeted by Masha because she was in possession of the gadget at the time. I heard her scream, and I turned just in time to see her flung against a tree and fall dead. The gadget was crushed beneath her body.

"I don't know what happened afterward. All I know is I lost control for the first time in years. I was just so angry, Orchid. She had killed my partner. She killed so many agents… and Ms. O said I just ran at her like a charging bull and tackled her to the ground. With one hand I drew out all her energy and redirected it straight into her brain.

"And then the whole place exploded."

Orchid let her mind still. She knew what she had to do.

* * *

 _We don't have all day, Orchid._

 _Seriously? Come on._

 _Orchid, this isn't Bring Your Grandpa to Work Day._

 _But I did_ you _a favor._

 _You're just a foolish little girl!_

The voices pounded inside her head. Right before she lost control, she felt the walls give.

Orchid was blown backward as the door shattered like glass.


	5. Overflow (OLD VERSION)

A/N: I haven't updated in almost a month and a half — yikes! I apologize for the delay, but eight grade begun with a LOT more homework than last year, not to mention that this was a hard chapter to write. Over the past month, I've pretty much redone my whole plan for the story, and let's just say that the body count at the end is going to be a lot more than I originally envisioned. I might go back and edit this chapter some more, but I just wanted to post it so I don't go too long without updating.

Square root joke creds go to my awesome sister Ivypool2005, who has a truly astounding plethora of math jokes. :)

* * *

 **PART 5**

 **OVERFLOW**

* * *

 **Olive**

"Okay, the instructions say to put two drops on the largest right-hand leaf." Olive placed two drops of water onto her new plant, John Paul. She dipped the eyedropper back into the cup of water as she read the next instruction aloud. " 'Next, place half a drop onto the highest leaf.' " She frowned. "What's half a drop?" She picked up the cup to inspect it. Maybe there were markings to show how much half a drop was.

"Yeah. No way. I'm _out_." Otto closed the book with a thud. "It's the middle of the night! We've been at this for hours! Why do we even have to water this thing? It's a _plant_. And we didn't even want it in the first place! Let's just go home."

Olive hesitated. She knew Obfusco would be really mad. But . . . she thought of lying down in a nice, comfortable bed, full of fatigued bliss as her head sunk into a fluffy pillow . . .

"Okay," she acquiesced. "After all, nothing's going to happen to it, right? John Paul will only start growing out of control if we water him _wrong_. The manual didn't say anything about not watering him at all. So I suppose he'll be fine —"

"OLIVE!" Olive jumped in surprise to hear her boss's voice behind her. Quiet as a cat, Ms. O had stalked out of the shadows without her or Otto noticing. "I need to talk to you in loud whispers!"

"What's the problem, Ms. O?"

Ms. O stood on tiptoe and cupped her hands around Olive's ear. "Agent Orchid broke the barrier," she whispered loudly.

Olive, in her many years working on the squad, had never been more shocked in her life. "Agent Orchid broke the barrier!?" She gave a huge gasp as the water pitcher slipped out of her hand. Water cascaded all over the floor.

Suddenly, a friendly face entered the room. "Hi!" said Octavia, a tub of bouncy balls in her arms. "I was just going to switch out the balls in the ballroom but I heard a loud sound in here so I just came to check that everybody was okay —"

"Agent Orchid broke the barrier!" Olive shouted.

Octavia gave an even _louder_ gasp and dropped the tub with a clatter. Then her face took on a confused expression. "What does that mean?"

"It means the world's going to end!" Ms. O yelled frantically. She turned to the side so Olive could see her profile, then said, "This is all your fault. If you hadn't helped her, if you hadn't been so idiotically stupid, none of this would have happened!"

Was she talking to her? Olive didn't know. But seemingly out of nowhere, a voice said in response:

"I won't deny that it was my 'fault', as you say, Ms. O, but I let her try because I thought that she was capable enough to control herself. Whereas you were just planning to keep her locked up forever. And I was right, and you were wrong. No offense, Ms. O."

"Plenty taken, Oz."

"Well, it doesn't matter anymore, because what's done is done, and the world is most certainly not going to end, and Orchid's power is completely in check, and everything will turn out just fine!"

"Will it, Oz?" Ms. O asked. "Will it?"

* * *

 **Orchid**

Her powers had been easy enough to contain inside her dinosaur room, but out here under no protection whatsoever, Orchid found it almost overwhelming. It was so incredibly exhausting to keep her power contained and block out everyone's thoughts and also focus about what was actually going on in real life. She had only been pacing up and down the hallway for the last three hours, and still found it almost impossible.

Maybe Ms. O had been right. Maybe she wasn't ready after all. Maybe she would never be ready. Maybe that Featherite should seal her inside that room again. Maybe she should get Oscar to remake that gadget, the one that could destroy a _lambero_. After all, what did she really have to live for? If this was what life would be like, having to focus all her attention on curbing her powers, she had no chance of really living. She gave up pacing, sat down against the wall like she had used to when she didn't know how to control her powers, and closed her eyes.

If an animal feels it has no reason to live anymore, it can literally redirect its energies into dying. Orchid wondered if that worked the same way for _lamberos_. It certainly didn't for normal humans, or they wouldn't be wasting energy killing themselves in such creative ways.

She tried to concentrate on dying. She tried to shut down her bodily systems. She imagined fading into nothingness. But instead, a voice snuck into her head.

 _Orchid, listen to me. Don't do this. There's something I need to say —_

"Oz? How did you get in my head?" That was something he hadn't taught her yet.

But it wasn't Oz who answered. Instead, another voice, an older but somehow sweeter one, entered Orchid's thoughts.

 _Orchid, I really hope you can hear me. I've never done . . . anything like this before. I have no idea what I'm doing. This is totally not normal for me — okay, okay, I'll stop freaking out. But I have something to say. Remember those few weeks we were partners?_

Of course she did. In those few weeks, she had put an agent in the hospital. And possibly crippled him for life — not that he had been any more ambulatory before. Those few weeks had turned from the best in her life to the worst, just like that.

 _Olive spoke into her thoughts again. You had never known Odd Squad before. You had never known a partner, or friendship, or the joys of having a purpose. All you knew was running and hiding, destruction and desolation. But then Ms. O brought you to the squad, and made me your temporary partner, and I tried to make you feel welcome and safe because I knew what it was like to be new and different and feeling all alone._

Orchid didn't know if Olive could hear her, or could only speak to her, but she replied anyway. "I know. It was sweet of you. And you — you did a good job. I liked being your partner, Olive. Thank you." It had been so long since her proud self had said those two words to anyone that they felt rusty and bitter on her tongue.

 _And I know our partnership ended sooner than either of us would have liked it to, because of the — thing, but I want you to remember what it was like. I like to think you were happy for those few weeks, and I want you to be able to be happy again. Can you remember that time? Maybe that'll help. Oz says it may help._

Orchid sighed. She remembered those weeks well; they had been some of the happiest in her life. But she couldn't think of them now without remembering how it had come to an end.

It had been Dr. Ozzington. Pushed into the pool of chairs.

And of course that reminded her of the murder she had committed, all those years ago, twisting a knife into the heart of a stranger whose name she never knew.

She hiccuped as she stifled a sob. Of course she hadn't meant to, and it was out of her control, but she still felt responsible. And the worst part was that she couldn't remember it. Not one second of it. She felt the air shimmer and wave around her, and heard a clap of thunder outside.

On a bright summer day, the sky had split open and let out a torrent of rain. Orchid gasped, and tried to stop her tears. But the rain just beat harder. It sounded like Olive's frightened cries, and the crackle of thunder was Dr. Ozzington's bones breaking on wood.

Remember the happy times, Olive had said. But she had none. Every happy memory Orchid could have had was snatched away by the pain of being a lambero. Every joy was tinged with sadness. Every bliss ended in heartbreak.

The moments never lasted. Which was why Orchid needed to hold onto the few she had, even if they weren't quite perfect.

She thought of the quiet nights, alone from the world, when she sat on her favorite hill above the highway and watched the traffic below. The red and white headlights had made patterns of light. Rubies and diamonds, she had called them. She thought of when Ms. O had saved her, and she instantly knew Odd Squad was where she belonged. She thought of Olive's smile, and her laugh, which sounded like the ringing of church bells on Christmas Day. Oz, guiding her hands as she learned a new skill. And when she got it right, she always felt a flicker of hope. Like there was something still worth living for; some beauty she had yet to discover.

She wanted to do everything, see everything, know everything. And that couldn't be achieved in a thousand lifetimes.

The deluge outside stopped. The hate, and despair, and hopelessness faded away, pooling in puddles on the ground and evaporating from the concrete under the hot summer sun.

All that was left was love.

* * *

 **Oprah**

"No."

Shocked, Oprah sprung up from her desk chair. "Excuse me?"

"I'm not sealing her in that room again. I never wanted to in the first place."

Oprah threw down her juice box and banged her fist on the desk. "As the head of this Odd Squad office, I order you to control Orchid's powers using whatever means necessary!"

The Featherite leader remained intransigent. "You are not in charge of me, Ms. O. Yell at me, threaten me. I don't care. I'm not doing it."

"Why on earth not? You know what she is. You know what will happen if she's just let loose. The girl has no self-control!"

"There is a test, in the Featherite community," Dove explained. "There is a room in the Featherite village that I locked and cast a charm on. It has been locked since the day I became leader. According to tradition, whoever in the village has the ability to break the charm and unlock the door, becomes the next Featherite leader. I have led for two hundred years, and so far no one has been able to open the door. For a _child_ to break that selfsame spell . . . it's inconceivable."

Oprah had never heard of this test before. If Orchid had been able to pass it so easily. What did it mean?

"You're afraid of what this means," Dove echoed her thoughts. "I, on the other hand, feel nothing but excitement. I had no idea the true extent of the powers of an awoken _lambero_ , having never encountered one myself before. Based on what I had heard, I once thought it prudent to keep Orchid inside her dinosaur room. But now that I see she could break the barrier, and control her breakdown, and everything else . . . she could do great things, Oprah, if you nurtured her power instead of crushing it down."

"She could do great things," Oprah agreed, "but she could also do terrible things. I'm not willing to take that risk."

"I don't know how you got to be head of an Odd Squad office. You are so close-minded. You refuse to see what is right in front of you. A great opportunity is in place for both you and little Orchid, if you would but open your eyes. But you won't, because you refuse to believe."

Oprah groaned. She hated when Dove said things like that to her, not only because it was insulting, but because deep down she knew Dove was right. Oprah was close-minded. She had once thought the situation was like a math problem, with one right answer and that was what she was doing. Now . . . she felt like a million answers were being pushed on her at once, all of them equally legitimate as the others. And she despised that feeling of seeing too many right answers or maybe none at all, and the helplessness of not knowing what to do. So she asked the Featherite leader, the one person who might understand. "Oscar thinks she should die. Oz wants to train her enough so she can pass as normal. You want to train her to be the next Oz. I'm overflowing with options now. What should I do?"

"You should do whatever you think is best." Dove turned and headed for the door. Oprah was about to say goodbye, but a question suddenly entered her mind. Or maybe it had been there all that time, but she just hadn't paid attention to it.

"Dove, what's inside that room? The one you locked? Is there anything inside it at all?"

The Featherite leader gave her an odd, guarded look. "That is for me to know and you to not concern yourself with."

She left the office.

.

How did she get to be head of an Odd Squad office? Dove had asked. Well, Oprah knew the answer. It was partly because of natural talent and hard work. But the other part was because she couldn't leave Odd Squad. She was tied to the office like Odysseus to his ship-mast, trapped of her own accord yet struggling to get free. No matter how close-minded she might be, she had come and she had stayed, and stayed and stayed until the thought of leaving was as ludicrous as the suggestion that the moon was made of blue cheese. She had stayed until she had become deaf to the sirens' song from hearing it for so long.

She could see the same thing happening to others, too. Olive, Octavia, Oz; Odd Squad had lured them in until they lost the will to have any other life. Odd Squad had seen them, saw the skills of an agent in them — intelligence, resolve, creativity. In a way, Odd Squad had saved them — saved them from leading mundane lives of mediocrity. Yet Odd Squad also destroyed them. Saving, destroying — there was no difference.

At least, there was no difference she could see. But then again, she was blind.

* * *

 **Otto**

"So, all I wanted was to drink some root beer," the man explained. "So naturally, I came to the park with my square cup to get root beer from the tree roots." He gestured to the tree they were under, which had one root dug up and exposed. But strangely, instead of being twisty and gnarled like a normal root, this root was square-shaped.

"Hmm. Square roots?" Olive asked. "We usually leave those alone. After a while they always multiply out again."

"Okay, but I really want root beer! Whenever I try to get it from these square roots — well, I'll just show you." The Root Beer Man drove a small spigot into the tree root and held his square cup underneath. Soon the cup was filled with frothy liquid.

"It's not root beer at all!" he wailed. "It's plain _beer_!"

"So, the root beer from the square roots turned into beer when it was poured into your square cup." Otto pondered the case. This was an odd one, all right. He looked over at Olive — even she seemed stumped. Suddenly a prickle crawled down his spine. Almost as if . . . something was watching him.

He tried to shake it off, but the feeling persisted. So he tried to focus on the case, to make it go away.

"Well, all you want is root beer, right?" The Root Beer Man nodded vehemently. "Why not just go to the gas station over there? They've got all kinds of root beer. And it's ice-cold, too."

"Oh!" He seemed relieved. "Thanks, Odd Squad!"

"Happy to help," said Olive.

Otto smiled as he watched the man race over to the gas station, giddy as a child. He opened the door to step inside — and seemed to disappear. Otto blinked and rubbed his eyes. Had it been a trick of the light?

"Otto?" Olive called from the tube entrance. "Aren't you coming?"

"Go without me," he said. "I want to check something out. I'll catch up with you later."

Olive shrugged and headed down the tubes. As soon as she was gone, Otto jogged to the gas station. He peered through the door of the convenience store. It was dark, but he could see shadows moving within. _What was going on inside?_ Definitely oddness. He thought about calling Olive for help — but then decided against it. Otto could do this alone.

He swung open the door and cautiously stepped over the threshold. He stood there for a moment, looking around.

He had only a moment to do so, but a lot can be seen in a moment.

A mini-fridge holding not only root beer, but all kinds of soda. The forms of men — and perhaps some women too, Otto couldn't tell in the dark — some pacing, some standing still as if they were waiting for something. A girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, with long hair and wielding a wickedly sharp knife. And, lying on the floor right in front of him, the body of the Root Beer Man, his throat split open until it was almost cleaved in two, blood the color of shadows gushing from the wound. Eyes staring in terror, mouth wide open in a scream that would never be uttered.

That was what Otto saw in a moment.

He gasped and let out a cry, and tried to scramble out of the store, but rough hands caught him and shoved him deeper into the store. He stumbled and tripped across the man's dead body and blood spattered his hands as the body rolled with the impact of Otto's weight. Another hand pulled him up and Otto felt the cold steel of a blade against his throat. He froze, barely daring to breathe.

"Who is it?" a voice called out. "Till, give us some light!"

The lights in the store flickered on. The girl, Till, stood with her hand on the light switch. With her long brown hair and ocean-blue eyes, Otto couldn't help noticing that she was beautiful — but in a different way than Olive. Olive had a warm beauty, one that invited friendship, but Till's beauty was colder than ice. She looked Otto up and down, in a dismissive way that made him distinctly uncomfortable.

"It's just an Odd Squad agent," she said with disgust. "I told you we should have put more of a guard at the door. Anybody can get through that weak thing."

Otto looked back toward the door and noticed, for just a second, silvery strands of something stringing across the threshold. They were definitely there, yet didn't look substantial or quite real. But then he blinked and the strands were gone. He blamed it on lack of sleep due to Robert Plant.

"Well, what should we do with him?" said the man holding the knife to Otto's throat.

"Kill him, of course," said another, a woman this time. "Just like the last one. A dead man tells no tales." She gave a malicious smile, showing a mouth full of jagged, bloodstained teeth.

"Nonsense. We'll do no such thing," Till said. "I've dealt with Odd Squad agents before. They've got tracking devices on their suits. Sooner or later a whole squad is going to come bearing down on us."

"Well then what do you suggest?" asked the woman.

Till bit her lip, afraid to answer. Finally, she spoke up. "Just let him go. He's seen nothing."

"Oh, feeling soft around the Odd Squad agent, are you? I always knew they were your weak spot. Like that time in —"

"Marielle!" A man materialized out of the darkness at the back of the store. It wasn't that he came into the light, but he actually, literally materialized out of nothing. Or at least, it looked like that to Otto. He furrowed his brow and tried to make sense of it all. It had been a really odd day.

"Marielle," the man spoke to the fanged woman, "Stop it. I'm fed up with you."

This man had a presence that commanded attention, Otto could see that. He had no doubt that he was their leader, even though he was smaller than many of the others and wore faded, worn clothes.

"Odd Squad has connections to the Featherites, Marielle."

The sentence stirred up whispers in the crowd. Their leader silenced them with a look.

"And you," he continued, "are an idiot to even think of angering them."

"I'm not afraid of some bird people," Marielle muttered under her breath.

"Well, you should be. Let him go, Damien." The man holding Otto released his grip and sheathed his knife back in his belt. Otto let out a huge internal sigh of relief.

"Somebody get him out of here. And make sure to wipe his memory, too," the man added.

Till stepped forward. "I'll make sure this agent doesn't come back here again," she said. She walked up to him until her nose was almost touching his. Otto was frightened — by her cold gaze, her unnatural beauty. He didn't want his memory wiped, but there was something about Till that rooted him to the ground. As he looked straight into her eyes, suddenly images flashed across his head in rapid succession. Suddenly . . . he understood anything. Till gave him the tiniest of nods.

Then everything was gone and the world went white.

.

And Otto was whooshing through the tube entrance at headquarters.

"Afternoon, Otto," O'Malley greeted him.

"O'Malley." Otto gave the customary greeting in return, but his mind was on something else. It was on what Till had told him. Well, not told so much as _transferred_. You can't tell someone something without words, but that was what Till had done. He went over the images, remembering every one with startling clarity.

And he saw how it all made sense.

The group was a group of dormant _lamberos_ who traveled the earth to rid the world of evil. But for the past five years, their goal had shifted. The leader of the group was named Grimes, the brother of the man Orchid stabbed. And now he wanted revenge.

Grimes's group wanted to kill Orchid. And not just kill her — obliterate all awoken _lamberos_ from the face of the earth, forever.

And there was something else that Till had tried to tell him too, that Otto couldn't quite understand. An image of blackened trees, flattened in a circle. A locked door pulsing with energy. Blue energy.

Whatever it meant, Otto knew Orchid was in imminent mortal danger. He ran to tell Ms. O.

* * *

A/N: So . . . that's the chapter. I may have overloaded you with information in this chapter, or maybe held back too much information — but don't worry! Everything will be revealed in the last three chapters! Truthfully, I'm not really sure where I'm going with the locked-room thing, but hopefully I'll figure out a place for it in the next few chapters. Before, I had a diagram of where every plot point would go in every chapter, but now it's more of a vague idea of the storyline arc. I guess I'll just see where my pen takes me. Or, well, my keyboard.


	6. Flood (OLD VERSION)

**PART 6**

 **FLOOD**

* * *

 **Oprah**

From the moment Otto raced through her office door, Oprah knew something truly terrible had happened. She could tell by the panicked look in Otto's eyes, the way he kicked open the door with the force of a world-class soccer player, how he tripped over three things but didn't stop running until he was a hair's breadth from her desk.

"What's the problem, Agent Otto?"

For a moment Otto just stood in silence, panting and gasping for breath. Then he spoke. "Orchid'sindangerpeoplewanttokillherwehavetohideher!"

"Wait, what? Can you repeat that?"

"Orchid'sgonnadieunless—"

" _Slowly_."

Otto took a deep breath and composed himself. "So today, we went to the park to investigate that square root case you sent us on." And he told her everything — the disappearing Root Beer Man, what happened inside the gas station, Till telepathically telling him the _lamberos_ ' plans. Oprah only interrupted once or twice to clarify a few details.

"So," Otto finished, "we have to hide Orchid. We can't let them get to her! I'm sure that's what Till was trying to tell me."

For the first time in forever, Oprah finally felt like she knew the right answer to this problem. "No," she said. "Orchid can handle herself now. What we need to do is not to hide from them. Odd Squad has done too much hiding. You said they're at the gas station?"

"Most likely."

"I'll go to them. I'll try to talk them out of this." It was a weak plan, Oprah knew, but it was better than the other two options circulating through her head.

"What? That's a terrible plan! What are you, crazy? These people are psychopathic killers. I saw what they did to that root beer guy. They'll destroy you!"

"Well, I know these people," Oprah said as she began to search through her desk. "And they know I have Featherite connections. They won't hurt me. If there's one thing these _lamberos_ are afraid of, it's the Featherites. You saw how Till convinced them to let you go, Otto."

Then a voice spoke out of thin air. "But one thing that'll trump their fear, Ms. O, is their need for Orchid's death."

Otto jumped in suprise. "Oz! Stop scaring me like that!"

"Just trying to help."

Three options. Each unlikelier to succeed than the next. "What do you suggest, Oz?" Oprah asked. "Because I'm not coming up with anything good."

"Don't do anything. Wait for them to come to us," Oz replied.

"So you want to use Orchid as bait." That had been Option #2. The most dangerous one, but if Oz thought it was a good idea . . . "Then what? Once they're inside headquarters, what should we do?"

"I dunno. Lock them in prison, kill them, I couldn't care less."

"I can't do that. They're good people, Oz. They're just . . ." She struggled to find the right word.

"Murderous? Psychotic?"

"Misguided."

"So you want to play guardian angel and teach them how to use their powers to do good. That'll never work."

"Well then, that's two of my three options gone."

"What's your third option?"

"You know, Oz. You can see into my mind. You just don't want it to be true."

A moment passed before Oz spoke again. "We can't do that. We can't just abandon her."

"But maybe it's our only choice," Oprah whispered. She hated the idea, hated herself for coming up with it, but it would be the safest way. Send Orchid back to the streets, maybe even deliver her to the _lamberos_ herself, and Odd Squad would be safe. They could even relocate, to a farm town far across the ocean where no one would ever, ever think of looking for them.

"It's not the only option!" Otto burst out. Oprah had almost forgotten he was there. "There must be some other way!"

Oprah sighed. But another idea was slowly forming in her mind . . . "I'll see what I can do. Otto, go back to — Otto?"

But Otto was gone. Oprah shrugged and turned to Oz standing beside her. Even though he was invisible, she was a firm supporter of old-fashioned face-to-face conversations.

"Go to the Featherites," she said quickly.

"They don't take in awoken _lamberos_ ," he replied just as quickly.

"I know. That's not what I was going for."

"Sorry. Your thoughts are going so fast I can't keep up."

"Tell them we need help."

"Ms. O, I think you've forgotten that _we_ help the Featherites. Never the other way around."

"They'll help us if you mention Orchid."

"What do you want them to do, peck the _lamberos_ to death with their little birdy beaks?"

"Since when were you so cynical?"

"Since you took away my purpose."

She certainly wasn't expecting that answer. It took her a moment to formulate something to say.

"I can't let you use your powers again, Oz. We were lucky you were all right after you shelled out the first time. I don't want to risk it again. And anyway, after a shellout powers are weakened dramatically. I don't want you hurting yourself trying to do something you can't."

"Right!" said Oz. "I was going to show you this. I've been working on it for a while, Ms. O . . . really since I started training Orchid. My powers weren't weakened or lost after I shelled out. I just misplaced them for a while. And . . . I think I've figured out how to reverse it."

"Reverse what?" Oprah asked. But she knew. She just didn't want it to be true.

Oz didn't respond. For six full minutes, a silence filled the room.

And then it started happening. A foot, a kneecap, then the whole leg. Oz's tie and badge appeared in vibrant red and gold. His face materialized last, in an expression of utter triumph. For a moment, Oz was all there, plain as day. Oprah blinked hard, disbelieving.

But it was just for a moment.

Like a flame, Oz's body flickered and flared. He gasped and his eyes rolled back into his head. He dropped to his knees, and then crumpled to the floor, going out like a candle.

Oprah cursed, an obscenity that no one would know today but would make a nineteenth-century sailor blush, and dropped to the floor, feeling around for Oz's body. She found it and pressed two fingers to his neck. There was a pulse, but it was very, very faint.

She grabbed the phone and dialed in the medical room. "Dr. O! In my office! It's a medical emergency!"

"You had me at medical," Dr. O responded, "but you really had me at emergency. I'm coming!"

Oprah sat back on her heels. She was afraid. Oz wasn't just one of the best agents she'd ever had, he was her friend. The first time he had shelled out was awful. It was a miracle that he had survived. Now . . . a miracle can't happen twice.

She shivered. All of a sudden the room was very cold.

* * *

 **Otto**

As soon as he was out of sight of Ms. O and Oz, Otto began to run.

He ran through the corridors, clumsily dodging agents and obstacles. By the time he got to the tube lobby, he was a sweaty mess and was beginning to wish he had spent more time with Olive on the basketball courts. But . . . what could he say? He was terrible at sports.

"O'Malley, take me to the park." He climbed inside the tube and got ready for takeoff. As much as he never wanted to go near that place again, Otto had suddenly realized something while in Ms. O's office. And he had to go back, to know that he had nothing to worry about. To know that she was still safe.

Till had spoken to him telepathically. But he had been talking to Oz recently, and he mentioned that other _lamberos_ could always tell when another of their kind was using their powers. Usually it was merely subconscious, just a sort of tug in your gut, but if you lived around other _lamberos_ like the Featherites or were trained to notice that sort of thing, in time you could tell who was doing the magic, where it was coming from, and what was being done.

So at least one of the _lamberos_ must have noticed Till's magic, and they had heard her message. And Otto had a feeling Grimes would kill Till if he had the slightest suspicion she was a traitor, with that same knife still wet with the Root Beer Man's blood.

Of course, maybe there was no cause for alarm. Maybe they had shrugged it off as an overreaction, or thought it was just part of the magic that sent him back to headquarters.

But what if?

So Otto _whooshed_ through the tubes, barely noticing his insides being mixed up and turned around, willing the tubes to go _faster, faster_ until he popped out of the tube exit at the edge of the park.

.

When he stepped inside the darkened and abandoned convenience store, Otto was overcome with the suffocating stench of death. Cringing, he put his hand over his mouth and tried to hold his breath. He wanted to turn back, to run away, run back to the tube entrance and to the warm comfort of headquarters.

But what if?

So he flicked on the light switch. Only one light flickered on — the rest had been completely smashed in, and shattered glass powdered the floor like snow. The Root Beer Man still lay on the floor, his blood now dried and clinging, sticky, to the floor, dusted by the coating of powdered glass.

But there was more blood, too, splattered _over_ the glass. Hesitantly, Otto reached out with his foot and poked one of the red puddles. His shoe slid easily in the blood — it was fresh.

Otto's breathing quickened. He was too late. He felt his heartbeat pounding faster in his chest. His legs suddenly felt weak, and he grabbed onto the counter for support. Underneath his hand he felt something very thin, rolling as his hand slid over the countertop . . .

He lifted his hand to find three gossamer-thin strands of chestnut-brown hair. Till's hair.

He really was too late. Till was already dead.

Otto peered around the room, but saw no sign of a body. The _lamberos_ must have taken her with them . . . or buried her discreetly somewhere. Or burned her. Or cooked her up and eaten her —

Otto refused to think about it.

He crossed the store and headed into a little side room. He didn't really know what he was doing, he just knew he had to somehow pay his respects, to the Root Beer Man and Till, to Edward Grimes and Dr. Ozzington, to Orchid's life turned inside out, to all the others who had met their untimely demise at the hands of Grimes's _lamberos_ , the countless others whose names he never knew, but someone else had.

He swung open the door to a supply closet. He grabbed a bucket, sponge, mop, and a big trash bag, and headed out of the room. He wished he could cover his mouth, but his hands were now full. Instead he tried to breathe through his mouth, as shallow as he could.

More than a little bit awkwardly, Otto dragged the Root Beer Man's mangled body into the trash bag, while trying to touch him as little as possible. He pulled out the Garbageinator from his back pocket, and, on the count of three, the body in the bag was gone. He didn't know where it went. Nobody knew where any of this stuff went when they gadgeted it away.

Then, Otto dipped the mop into the bucket of soapy water and began mopping up the floor. When the Root Beer Man's blood refused to yield, he got down on his hands and knees and scraped it away. By the time the room was clean from top to bottom, Otto was breathing heavily from the exertion, but he didn't notice the smell anymore.

His hands were bloodied from the broken glass, but he felt no pain. His suit was splattered with icky matter, and he didn't even notice.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the long wait. Also I know the story is going a bit slowly now, I've got a couple more chapters of rising action before we get to the climax, and I am very very very very scared about that chapter because let's just say I am absolutely terrible at writing action scenes. Thanksgiving break is coming up, so I might get Part 7 out sooner than usual. :)


	7. Prophecy of Death (OLD VERSION)

**PART 7**

 **PROPHECY OF DEATH**

* * *

 **Orchid**

"Well, I must say this is _quite_ an improvement," Timmy the Triceratops remarked atop Orchid's shoulder. "I call it a success! Let's go back to the dinosaur room and transform all of the other toys now."

That morning, Orchid had mustered up her courage and transformed her little plastic dinosaur into a live, breathing dinosaur. It didn't change much for her, but, as Timmy had said, it was _quite_ an improvement from her dinosaurs' voices just being in her head (or, as others had said, her "imagination"). She sighed with contentment as she felt Timmy's tiny claws burrow into her shoulder.

"All right. Let's go back," she said to him, and started back down the hall to her dinosaur room, and abruptly stopped when she saw Otto standing right in front of her.

"Hello, _Sherman_ ," she said and began to walk around him.

"What is that?" Otto asked, looking a little frightened as his eyes followed Timmy the Triceratops, flexing his wings on Orchid's shoulder.

"What are you staring at? I make friends really easily."

"Sure. Okay." Otto seemed worried. Curious, Orchid pried a little into his mind.

"Well, see you later then," Otto said. He began to walk away.

Orchid knew she had to say _something_. "She's not dead, you know," she called out to his retreating form. He stopped.

"What did you say?" he asked incredulously.

"The girl you met. Till. You think she's dead, but she's not."

"How do you know that?"

Orchid thought for a moment. How _did_ she know that? "I guess . . . I just imagine her face, and my brain — or whatever knows this stuff — tells me where she is. And then I get this feeling that I _know_ she's alive. I can't really explain it."

"You know where she is? Where?" Otto's voice was bordering on desperation.

"She's with the other _lamberos_ ," Orchid responded, "in the next town over. They don't know about . . . what she did. She's been manipulating you, Sherman. I bet she was laughing as she watched you freak out over a little blood and a couple strands of hair."

"For your information, it was not 'a little blood'. It was a fairly large puddle. And I'm not like you, or her! I had absolutely no way of knowing she was alive!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Sher —" Suddenly Orchid stopped. She felt herself freeze. A horrible dread came over her, and spread from her core to her fingers and toes, making her unable to move. Then, from the depths of her consciousness, she heard Ms. O's voice.

 _Dr. O! In my office! It's a medical emergency!_

And even deeper inside her own mind, she subconsciously reached her own conclusion:

 _Oz_.

The word shook Orchid out of her frozen state. With all the speed she could muster, she raced down the hallway to the medical room. If Oz really had shelled out again, there was only one person capable of healing him.

"Orchid, where are you going?" Otto shouted after her, but she didn't hear him over the blood rushing through her ears.

She couldn't be late.

.

"I don't know what's wrong with him!" Dr. O said, her normally calm and serious voice on the edge of hysteria. "It's like he just fainted, but he's not breathing and his heart rate is completely slowed down and he's cold as ice —"

Orchid huffed in frustration and pushed past the frenzied doctor into the medical room. Instantly, everyone in the room turned to face her, identical expressions of shock on all their faces.

Ms. O, looking more angry than anything. Oren, his blotchy, tear-stained face having wiped away his sneering pride. Otto, looking confused and Olive, afraid. Orchid had never seen Olive afraid before.

"Orchid, leave," said Ms. O.

"I won't!" she responded resolutely. "I can save him, Ms. O." Orchid stepped to the foot of the hospital bed, and her eyes widened in surprise. Oz was _there_. He was . . . visible. She could see the bed through his translucent form, but she could _see_ him.

Orchid grasped Oz's cold hand in her own. Ms. O moved to pull her away, and Orchid placed her free hand on her boss's shoulder. "Trust me, Ms. O. Trust me like you used to trust Oz."

She felt a startling range of emotions surge beneath Ms. O's angry face. Confusion, grief, guilt. Her frown disappeared.

"Do what you want. But he's a lost cause," she said, almost at a whisper. "Oren, Olive, can you two come with me, please?" With her head held high and blinking hard to hide the tears in her eyes, she walked out of the room, the two agents following.

 _I can't bear to watch_ , Orchid heard Ms. O say outside the door.

 _Watch what? I can fix him._

Even so, Orchid was beginning to have her own doubts. But she pushed those aside. She felt nothing, but saw her hand tremble as she lifted up Oz's. She took a deep breath, clearing her mind, and dove into Oz's consciousness.

 _Oz? Can you hear me?_

Nothing. She tried again.

 _Oz? Oz, I know you're there. Please wake up. We need you._ I _need you._

 _Orchid?_

She gasped. Oz's voice was tiny and faint, but it echoed deep in the space of his mind. _Yes, Oz, it's me. I'm here. Wake up, Oz, wake up, wake up!_

 _I can't, Orchid._

 _Yes, you can, Oz. We need you, Oz. If you don't wake up right now I might just kill you._

 _Ha ha. No, Orchid, it's my time._

 _What do you mean, it's your time?_ Orchid felt herself getting angrier. _Wake up, Oz, wake up, Sherman, wake up, wake up!_

 _Orchid, I'm not waking up. I need to tell you something._

 _Don't tell me you're going to die because you're not._

 _Ms. O is going to go speak with the group of_ lamberos _that Otto found. She think she can make Grimes see reason._

 _She's delusional, then._

 _Listen, I've seen . . . I know. Tell her not to go. Someone's going to die, Orchid._ She's _going to die. I can't let her die . . ._

 _Okay, thanks for the info. But as of right now, I think our top priority is preventing_ you _from dying._

Oz didn't respond.

 _Oz? Oz!_

Suddenly Orchid felt herself flung out of Oz's mind, so hard that she physically stumbled backward into Otto. She gasped, winded; she felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Otto, no doubt confused, gently guided her to a chair. She sat down heavily.

"What happened?" Otto asked.

Orchid bit her lip, wondering how to say it. She decided to just tell it like it is. "Otto, Ms. O is going to die."

* * *

 **Otto**

"Ms. O . . ." Otto lingered just outside her office. Ms. O had taken every precaution possible — slipped on a bulletproof vest, hidden sleeping darts in the lining of her jacket, even gotten out the canoe (the big one).

"Don't try to stop me, Otto." Ms. O called out. "I'm going whether you like it or not, and I need someone to watch over headquarters while I'm away."

"But, Ms. O —"

"I'll be fine. Don't you worry about me one bit."

"But —"

"Agent Otto, please just leave me in peace!" She pushed the button to open her personal tube entrance.

"OZ SAID YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!" Otto shouted.

Ms. O halted. "Oz? He woke up?"

"No, he talked to Orchid. Somehow. It was like some sort of mystical telepathic connection —"

"Thanks for the information. I'm still going."

Otto took a deep breath. "Then I'm coming with you."

This caught Ms. O off guard for a moment. "What did you just say?"

"I'm coming with you." He stepped inside the office. "Whether you like it or not."

"Absolutely not." Ms. O strode inside the tube. "I'm going alone."

"But what if you need help?" He jogged up to face Ms. O in the tube entrance. "Remember the Great Wall of Oatmeal?" Otto hadn't been on the squad then (or even alive, for that matter) but he had heard so many stories about it that it was almost as if he'd been there. "Odd Squad needed every agent to help save the day. The day Olive and I got trapped in Sector 21? We needed every single tube operator to pitch in. The Tunguska Explosion? You couldn't save O'Donahue by yourself, you needed —"

"DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT O'DONAHUE!" Ms. O suddenly burst out.

"Right. Sorry," Otto said, although he really wasn't sure why. "But what I'm saying is, you can't do this alone. I want to come."

Ms. O stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she stepped out of the tube — and shoved Otto in.

"Wait, what are you —"

But before he could finish his sentence, Otto was squishinated into a small red ball and sent zooming through the tubes . . . through the tubes to Ms. O's doom.

* * *

 **Olive**

"Orchid? Can I come in?"

Olive recalled the last time she had asked her former partner those words, that day she couldn't control herself and the glass came shattering down and she remembered Todd.

Orchid's dinosaur room was now a paradise. Everything sparkled now as if dipped in sunlight. At some point, she had added a little pond where Leo the Liopleurodon now swam happily. Because of course, now all the little dinosaurs were alive (well, Orchid had claimed they had been alive all along, but she also thought Olive's name was Sherman).

"Of course, Sherman. You can always come in. You were my partner." Orchid's voice was soft, subdued. She was obviously feeling awful that she'd failed to save Oz.

Olive stepped inside Orchid's dinosaur room, and pulled the door shut behind her. "I love what you've done to this place," she said as a conversation starter.

Orchid nodded. "The dinosaurs like it better here now." She turned her gaze straight into Olive's eyes, and Olive noticed for the first time how clear the young agent's eyes were. So perfectly gray you could see all the way down.

"You didn't come just to small talk, Olive," Orchid said reproachingly. "You never do something for no reason. You came to tell me something."

** "Sup." said Katherine as she hacked into sammie's story **

"Yeah. Okay. Um. Well." Olive looked up at the ceiling.

"Spit it out."

As Orchid stared into her eyes, Olive found the words of her speech come back. "Ms. O has decided to go to Grimes's _lamberos_ , and try to talk some sense into them."

"WHAT!?" Orchid interrupted, her clear eyes wide. "Didn't Otto tell her she was going to die?"

"Yes, but she's going anyway," Olive responded. "I'm sure she has a reason. And she's very well-protected. Otto's going with her."

"You have got to be kidding me," Orchid muttered. "All right, I'm going too," she announced.

"Absolutely not," Olive countered. "Ms. O sent me here to tell you expressly that you are going to stay here, at headquarters, looked after by _me_. You are not going anywhere, you are not helping Ms. O, and you are most definitely _not killing any more_ lamberos _!_ "

By the hurt look on Orchid's face, Olive knew she had struck a nerve. Hurriedly, she said, "Look, Orchid, I didn't mean —"

"I know what you meant," Orchid said indignantly. "I'm still too dangerous to do — to do anything! Well, you know what? I don't care what Ms. O said, Sherman. I'm going, whether she likes it or not. Whether _you_ like it or not." Her voice had been steadily rising, and now it was almost at a scream. "I couldn't save Oz, but I sure as hell can save Ms. O!"

And she disappeared.

"Orchid!" Olive gasped, waved her arms in the space where Orchid had been. Nothing. Ms. O was going to kill her when she found out.

If she lived long enough to find out.

"Crumpets," she mumbled into the empty air.

* * *

 **Octavia**

 _Octavia, I think you should come with me._

 _What's the problem, Oren? . . . Have you seen my partner?_

 _That's the reason you should to come with me._

 _What's happened to Oz?_

.

They walk down the hallway

the never ending hallway

the never ending hallway ending in the medical room.

.

She is petrified. Her feet are made of cement. She cannot speak in more than a whisper.

"What's happened to Oz?"

This is what has happened to Oz.

.

 _He's changed, Octavia._

 _Is he visible again?_

 _Yes . . . in a way._

 _That can only be good then, right? . . . Right?_

.

He is visible again.

He is visible but doesn't move, doesn't blink. Doesn't breathe.

 _I'm sorry, Octavia._

"Why?"

.

He will never again joke with her, never again tease her and steal her pens, never again beat her at hide-and-seek, never again smile and light up the room, never again point the wrong gadget in the wrong direction, never never never

.

A woman screams as she falls to the ground, blood blooming over her heart. Her blood is a red flower frozen in time. A boy shells out, his magic — what makes him fundamentally _him_ — fizzles out, leaving nothing, nothing left. His magic leaves, and he can be seen. But he will never breathe again.

When her mother died she ran. Now she stays still. Her feet are made of cement.

.

 _Why?_

She feels the tears streaming down her face. Oz will never cry again. She sinks to her knees. Oz's knees will never feel the coldness of the floor again. She puts her face in her hands. Oz's hands will never touch his own face ever again.

"I'm so sorry, Octavia. Your partner is dead."

 _Why?_

* * *

A/N: I know this chapter is far from perfect, I just wanted to post it before I have to start studying for exams. Also, I don't ship Octavia and Oz. I think they were just very good friends. I'll try to get Part 8 up by the end of this month. It's going to be a difficult chapter to write but I'm really excited for it! (And yes, my friend Katherine actually did hack into my story. I decided to leave it because I thought it would bring some entertainment value. :D)


	8. A Frozen Flower (OLD VERSION)

A/N: Woohoo! Finals are over! I've also been having a very good writing week, which always lifts someone's spirits. Here's Part Eight for you all! :D

* * *

 **PART EIGHT**

 **A FROZEN FLOWER**

* * *

Orchid appeared in the park. She breathed in the cool night air, thankful for its sweet smell. She had been cooped up inside headquarters for too long. Now all she had to do was find Ms. O, and then together they would find the lamberos, and Orchid would give herself up to Grimes so Odd Squad would be safe. Escaping would be easy-peasy.

Where was Ms. O? Orchid cast out her senses. She picked up something from a few blocks down — Ms. O, approaching the dragon's lair. Orchid began to walk toward her, along the deserted road. The dark velvet of the night sky above her, and the black asphalt below, seemed like a dream. In something of a trance, she just walked, and walked, and walked some more.

Soon her feet left the road. Hills loomed on one side of the street, and she found herself ascending, the hill-grass cold and springy underneath her feet. Orchid had forgotten her shoes.

She didn't know where she was going, she just knew that this was where she was supposed to go.

But at the top of the hill, she remembered where she was. This used to be her favorite hill, the one where she had used to sit, night after night, watching the cars go by.

When Orchid was young, she used to think that this hill was the top of the world.

So from the top of the world, she gazed at the rubies and diamonds crawling along the highway below.

From the top of the world, she slept.

* * *

Orchid dreamed of rubies and diamonds, a red frozen jewel of a flower locked inside a diamond of ice. She had dreamed she was the flower before, struggling to escape free. Now, she was looking from outside the ice, watching the flower's futile attempts at freedom.

 _Free it._ She heard a whisper. _Free it._

 _You are the flower._

 _You are the ice._

 _You are the liberator._

Orchid reached out a hand and pressed her palm to the ice. It began to melt away where her warm hand made contact. She felt herself absorb the water, and pull it into her bones.

 _There is a test, in the Featherite community._

Suddenly, Orchid realized who was whispering to her. She wore feathers and a beak and mouths on her arm. She had been Orchid's jailer, and now was her liberator.

 _There is a room in the Featherite village that I locked and cast a charm on._

As the last of the ice melted away, Orchid gingerly picked up the frozen flower by its stem. But as her hand touched the flower, frost spread from her fingertips and encapsulated the fragile prize. Ice hardened around its petals.

 _It has been locked since the day I became leader._

Orchid ran her hand over the thin coating of ice. Smooth and cold. A blue spark flew from her finger and landed on the flower, and that section of the ice began to thaw — a perfect circle. But the rest remained cold and smooth.

 _According to tradition, whoever has the ability to break the charm and unlock the door . . ._

The flower was blessed and cursed. Trapped within its diamond prison of ice, it would forever be preserved, youthful and bright, its colors never worn away by the passage of time. But it was trapped all the same, though the flower might not know it. Orchid clenched her fist around the stem of the frozen flower. Should she break the ice, she would destroy it. She was the flower; she was the ice. She was the liberator.

 _This is your destiny, Orchid._

She flung the flower to the ground. Its petals snapped from the stem, turned brown and died. And the ice shattered, shattered like glass and melted away and everything was water and the water was overflowing.

It brought a flood like none Orchid had ever seen.

The flood swept Orchid off her feet, and soon she couldn't stay afloat any longer and was brought down by the dark tide. Holding her breath, she sunk to the bottom, where she came down to rest on something very hard protruding from the ground. She took a closer look. It was the lock to a trapdoor.

 _There is a locked room . . ._

Orchid kicked at the lock, then kicked at the door itself, again and again, to no avail. Desperate and running out of air, she tried a different tactic. She concentrated her energy into the palm of her hand, and directed it straight at the middle of the trapdoor. It exploded, splinters and shards of wood cast everywhere.

She swam through the entranceway, and breathed in the freshest air she had ever tasted — that of freedom and relief. Slowly descending to her feet on the ground, she looked back up towards the trapdoor . . . it was gone, with only white ceiling where it used to be.

Then in front of her, Orchid saw a box, bolted with the same kind of lock that had secured the trapdoor. Examining it, she was reminded of an old poem she had once heard:

 _In a dark, dark wood_

 _there was a dark, dark house._

 _And in the dark, dark house_

 _there was a dark, dark room._

 _And in the dark, dark room_

 _there was a dark, dark box._

 _And in the dark, dark box . . ._

Orchid wasted no time. She blasted the box, blowing it to smithereens. And, left unscathed in the middle, was something Orchid had never, ever seen but somehow knew what it was.

"Of course," she said to herself as she picked it up and put it in her pocket.

She was the flower.

She was the ice.

She was the liberator.

* * *

Orchid woke up with a start — and instantly felt something hard in her back pocket. She gulped, thinking of her dream.

 _I will not look at what is in my pocket_

 _I will not look at what is in my pocket_

 _I will not look at what is in my pocket_

 _I will not look until I have to._

Even so, she kept a hand over her back pocket as she, no longer in that trancelike state anymore, began to walk again in the direction of Ms. O. Just to make sure.

But she would not look at what was in her pocket.

And as Orchid walked, she felt the world in motion around her. She was tall enough to touch the stars and yet small enough to march with the ants. She was an infant who thought a hill was the top of the world and yet a thing older than time itself. She was not just Orchid, she was Ms. O, Otto, Olive, Oscar, Oz.

* * *

 _"But Ms. O, what about the nice list?"_

 _Yes, what about it? She cared more than she should have about that eggnog-flavored juice box. She had lived through more Christmases that it really shouldn't have mattered so much. But she couldn't help feeling a bit sad as she waved goodbye to the nice list and said to Oscar, "This isn't about me anymore. It's about Christmas!"_

 _Anyway, if working through the night in order to make people happy was what Christmas was for the head of Odd Squad, then it might as well be Christmas every day._

* * *

That was no special day for Ms. O. And, should Orchid take Oz's place on the squad eventually, this — today — would be no special day for her either. This would be her every day. This would be her Christmas, this would be her birthday, this would be her future. This would be her partner, this would be her child, this would be her family. This night would be her every night.

 _There is another world underneath Odd Squad_ , Oz had once explained to her. _A word of magic and curses, good and evil, darkness and void._

She could turn back now. It was not too late for her. She could leave Ms. O, and Otto too, to face the lamberos alone. After all, this was Ms. O's idea. It was not really her fight. She could even leave the squad if she had to, now that Oz had taught her how to control her power. She could leave for the city, have a nice, quiet life, maybe even become a hairdresser . . .

Orchid didn't turn back. She kept going.

* * *

 _"Todd was my old partner. This is my fight to fight."_

 _He hated feeling helpless. He knew this would not end well for Olive. Todd had the Flipflopperinator gadget, after all. But he could do nothing but stand aside and let his partner go without him._

 _After all, isn't that what partners are for? Sometimes they help each other, and sometimes they work together. But sometimes, not as often but sometimes, they have to be the ones to stand aside, because they alone understand what their partner needs and, more importantly, what she wants._

 _So even though it pained him, he stood aside._

* * *

Oz, you didn't stand aside for me even though everyone else did. You were there for me, always. You taught me when no one else would, or could. You were always there to guide me, and I'll never forget that. Even though now I know part of the reason was that you were so desperate to have a purpose that you wanted to live through me, you saved my life.

I tried to save your life, Oz. You wanted me to stand aside, to let you die, and I wouldn't. I had to repay my debt to you. I had to save you, and I couldn't. Maybe it was something I did, or didn't do, or could have done better. Or maybe there was nothing I could do. I'll never know.

But I do know what you meant now, when you told me to let you go. You wanted me to because you succeeded. You did it, Oz. It doesn't matter that you're gone. You live through me now, and you'll never be gone as long as I live.

Maybe that's how people know when it's their time to go: when they've given up all of themselves to other people. And we accumulate other people, inside, the more people who give of themselves. And when we give, we lose a bit of ourselves. So now I am you, Oz, and I am Ms. O, and Olive, and Otto, and everyone else who's ever helped me in my life. And everyone who I've helped have something of me in them, too.

You see then, Oz? Do you see how we are all interconnected circles? I am you and you are me. There is no difference, especially within people like us.

We are the flower.

We are the ice.

We are the liberators.

* * *

 _"Ottilie!"_

 _He stared, frozen in his tracks, as his partner was seemingly thrown up into the air by an invisible hand. She hovered there for a second, screaming but refusing to let go of the gadget, until the hand flung her straight toward the trunk of an ancient oak tree. He heard a crack as the wood of the tree groaned and split, broken by the sheer force of a lambero's will._

 _And that gadget, that precious, precious gadget, still locked in Ottilie's iron grip, was crushed under her body as she fell onto her face. He didn't know what was worse — that his partner was dead, or that the gadget was destroyed. No, the thought that the gadget might have been more important than a human being — his partner — was the worst of all._

 _Three things to be angry at. One he could manage. Two stretched his limits. But three, each worse than the next . . ._

 _He lost control._

* * *

That night, trying to catch up with Ms. O and meet her destiny, Orchid finally understood him.

That day in Tunguska, Oz was in a dark, dark house inside a dark, dark wood. The walls were cold and smooth and blue and try as he might to fight his way out of the diamond of darkness he could not. Because Ottilie was the sun and she was gone and all that was left was darkness. No light, no love.

And in the darkness he met Natalia and she said _come with me_. And he kept going and ignored her call because he was searching, trying to find his partner behind the cold icy wall of death.

The story is a bit different now, but the meaning is the same.

 _We have to figure out how many jellybeans are in that jar_ , she now says. And he still walks past, ignoring her, still searching.

 _She's here_ , Orchid wanted to say to him. _Ottilie is in you, forever. You don't need to go looking for what's already here, in your heart._

But to tell him, she would have to find him. And Oz had gone behind that cold icy wall of death.

* * *

Oz had really cared about no one but Ottilie. Like O'Donahue and Olga, forever separated — one preserved within ice, and the other withering away outside of it.

What had he said, when she had talked to him?

 _She's going to die. I can't let her die . . ._

Of course.

* * *

 _I will not look at what is in my pocket_

 _I will not look at what is in my pocket_

 _I will not look at what is in my pocket_

 _I will not look until I have to._

And finally, Orchid stood at the edge of Sector 21. The perfect place to hide, if you had the means to fight the dangers of the forest. Such as magical blue energy that you could manipulate to your will.

Ms. O and Otto were here, in this forest, in the darkest of nights. Someone would die tonight. But the one thing Orchid was sure of was that it wouldn't be Ms. O, not if she could prevent it. This time she would finally do something right for once.

 _In a dark, dark wood . . ._

* * *

A/N: Well, that was fun. Part Nine should be out soon!


	9. Farewell to the Monsters (OLD VERSION)

A/N: I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO WRITE THIS CHAPTER SINCE JULY. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

* * *

 **PART NINE**

 **FAREWELL TO THE MONSTERS**

* * *

"It is no longer possible to escape men. Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men."

— Jean-Paul Sartre, _The Devil and the Good Lord_

* * *

"He said they would be here," Ms. O mused, frowning at the polka-dotted bench. "He told me to come here."

"Who told you?" Orchid asked, curious. She was still surprised that Ms. O had accepted her help and not sent her back to headquarters. In fact, she was probably more surprised at this than Ms. O had been at Orchid's appearance.

"Grimes," Ms. O answered. "Not this one, his brother. The one you . . . well, he used to work at Odd Squad. We were friends . . . of a sort. Then he chose to leave. He said that if I ever needed to see him, I should come here. They would know, he said. They would know that I was here. I came here several times over the last few decades, and they always met me right here, at this bench."

"Pleasant place to rendezvous," Orchid said sarcastically. "I really like the sparkly rocks."

"They should be here," Ms. O murmured to herself, choosing to not hear Orchid. "Why are they not here?"

"Maybe they are, but they just don't want to talk to you." All three agents suddenly jumped at the voice seemingly coming out of the bushes behind them. Grimes, still in his faded plaid shirt, materialized on the path, along with a dozen or so other _lamberos_.

Orchid gulped. She had never before seen so many people like her in one place, and they looked scary. One at the back had pointed fangs for teeth, and another wore lethal-looking spiked boots.

"Why have you brought so many people?" Otto demanded, trying to sound tough. "We — Ms. O, that is — just wanted to talk this out with you, Mr. Grimes. We have no fight with the rest —"

"Oh, but you do," said Grimes. "You say the fight is just between Ms. O and me but it is not. It concerns all of my people —" he gestured at the men and women behind him — "as well as you, and me, and especially _her_." He turned his stare to Orchid. She felt his glare pierce through her skin.

She had to say something. "I know this concerns me," she said, "or else I wouldn't have come. I know you want me dead because I killed your brother, _which was a complete accident that I had absolutely no control over_ ," she added just loud enough for Grimes to hear, "and I'm willing to come with you without a fight, as long as you promise to leave Ms. O and Odd Squad in peace."

He barked a laugh. "Good try, little girl. You almost fooled me. Fortunately for me, however, I can see into the little girl's mind. And I know she plans to escape. And I know she can, too. And I know I'm not falling into that trap, or any trap you may have set for me of any kind."

 _Stupid, stupid!_ Orchid wanted to slap herself on the forehead. Of course Grimes could read her mind. She should have shielded it before she came here. But Oz had only ever taught her a simple shield. Could Grimes have broken that, or — wait. This was ridiculous. She _hadn't_ shielded herself, so it really didn't matter —

"Ottilie?"

Orchid snapped of her thoughts. The word had come from Ms. O, who had been standing still as a statue, her face pale with horror, since the _lamberos_ appeared. A single word, uttered from her lips, soft and timid, a question where she was afraid of the answer. Orchid followed her shell-shocked gaze to land her eyes on one of the _lamberos_ , standing modestly near the trees, hands folded behind her back and blue eyes focused on the ground beneath her feet. When Ms. O said that name Orchid thought she saw Till's hands clasp a little tighter. But she didn't say a word, didn't even look up.

No. It couldn't be true. Ottilie was a different person, an Odd Squad agent, valiantly killed in the Tunguska Explosion. She had been flung from the air headfirst into a tree, cracking the tree in two, her force as strong as a lightning storm. She had fallen face first onto the ground, her hair splaying out hiding her lifeless face. Chestnut hair hiding beautifully blue eyes.

It couldn't be true, yet Orchid knew it was.

Ms. O still recognized her, and Ms. O was never mistaken.

But how? How had she survived, and stayed so young for all these years, and hidden from Odd Squad for so long? Orchid tried to pry into Till's mind, but she had put up a shield nearly as strong as Dove's and it would take unnecessary energy to break it.

"Ottilie." Ms. O spoke again. "I know it's you. I'd recognize you anywhere. How . . . what . . . when . . . where . . ." She trailed off, still uncertain.

"I do not answer to that name anymore, Oprah," Till said quietly as a river in winter. "I'm done with Odd Squad. Ottilie died that day in Siberia. This is not her."

"But . . ." Ms. O was at a loss for words. "All this time I thought you were dead," she whispered. "But no, you weren't. We never found you. The tree was broken, and Oz had seen it, but we never found you. I always thought some animal had . . . or you'd been blown away by the explosion . . ."

"They saved me," Till said, her gaze still on the ground. She might have been reciting a lecture on earthworms for the expression on her face. "He took me away and saved my life. And then you killed him," she said to Orchid, lifting her face for the first time. Daggers shot from her eyes and pierced into Orchid's body, and she wanted to tell Till that she was already mortally wounded from Grimes's stare.

"You killed him," continued Till, "and then _he_ took over. And I don't know what's worse — that the man who saved my life is dead, or that _this_ man took over." Her words were spit out like poison that shriveled the forest floor. "Or is it worse that I'm wondering if having a bad leader is worse than having no leader at all? Maybe all three are the same. I wouldn't know. I've spent a hundred years in this hell we call our world, and I still don't know a damn thing."

It was like the shield in Till's mind was a stone wall a mile thick guarding a lake where leviathans swam so deep that their blind eyes never saw the sunlight. Orchid knew something was there behind the shield, she just couldn't find it. But it was something important that she was hiding. It wasn't a secret, a piece of information — it was herself. Ottilie was still in there, trapped at the bottom of the deepest lake in the world, and every day she spent as Till thickened the ice that sealed Ottilie inside, frozen.

And everyone knows flowers wither without sunlight and eventually, die.

"Till is not your agent any longer, Oprah," said Grimes, jerking Orchid back to the present. "She does not concern you."

"Of course she concerns Ms. O!" Orchid burst out. "She concerns all of Odd Squad, as well as you, and me, and especially _her_." She couldn't help but spit his own words back at him. "She is in Oz and Oz is in me and I am in Ms. O and Ms. O is in everyone, everyone she's ever met because she helps everyone she meets, because she's that special kind of person who does." The words were spilling out now, making no sense to everyone except Orchid. "Till matters, and you're an idiot if you think she doesn't."

Grimes's face had gone pale. But it was not an afraid pale, it was an angry pale. He had gone white with rage and was trembling in his well-worn boots. "What," he said quietly, because silence is the strongest weapon of all, "did you just call me?"

Orchid was deathly afraid, but she refused to let it show. "I said you're an idiot," she said, lifting her chin high. "I think you're a pompous, fox-hearted, worm-faced coward who deserves to be blown to pieces by robot princesses and sent to rot at the bottom of the deepest lake in the world."

"Orchid!" hissed Ms. O warningly, drawing a finger across her throat as to say, _Cut it out!_

She stopped reluctantly, not because Ms. O had told her to but because her words had done their work. Grimes's face was beet red now, and he looked like he could make a volcano blow at any second.

Which, if these _lamberos_ were anything like the Featherites, he probably could.

"Alright, that's it," he said, still using that quiet voice that was anything but a whisper. "Request for a peaceful conversation denied. Give us the child now, or heads are going to roll."

Orchid imagined Grimes's head popping off with a _thunk_ and bouncing once, twice before rolling away. She smiled.

Then a voice entered her head. _You have to get away from here. Come with me_ , said Till. Or Ottilie now — or whoever she was. Orchid frowned, sneaking a peek at Till. She hadn't moved.

 _Whose side are you on?_ Orchid asked.

Silence. Then, _just follow me._

Silence.

 _Don't you trust me?_

Orchid almost laughed out loud. _Trust you? I'll trust you when a mute man tells a deaf man that a blind man saw a man with no legs walking on water, plus three weeks!_

Then she felt the strangest sensation, as if she was being tugged at by some force. Like someone had grabbed the collar of her suit and was pulling her into a vortex, but she resisted and she stretched like a rubber band and —

 _Snap!_ Orchid fell, drained, and felt hard rock scrape under her knees. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. This was not the spot by the polka-dotted bench. Not at all.

"Where'd she go?" she heard Grimes demand, but it was far away. She rolled up her pant legs to inspect her knees — they were scratched and bleeding. She winced.

"So weak." Orchid's head snapped up to see Till standing over her. Her hair whipped in the wind and her blue eyes shot daggers sharper than a falcon's dive. But there was a playful glint at the corners of her eyes, too.

"Just kidding." She held out her hand for Orchid to take, and pulled her back to her feet. "How old are you again?"

"Seven." She began to brush off the dust from her suit, not looking Till in the eye.

"No, I mean how old are you really?"

"I was born about twelve years ago."

Till's eyes widened. "No wonder Grimes wants you so badly."

"What do you mean?" Orchid looked up, and saw a huge flood of emotions simmering behind her eyes — fear, bewilderment, a little respect even, and was that jealousy?

"If you're twelve you haven't got much time left," she said.

"What do you mean, 'not much time left'?" Orchid asked hesitantly. She could guess the answer and was afraid of it.

"You don't know?" Now pity sparked in her eyes. Orchid turned away. She didn't need Till's pity. "Orchid, you have a — an expiration date, of a sort. You came from a rip in the fabric of the odd world, two —"

"Large-scale odd occurrences happening side by side, pulling the fabric both ways and causing it to rip. Yes, I know _that_."

"Five stars aligned above that rip, and you pulled all their energy into yourself. You have the light of five stars inside you, Orchid."

Orchid didn't know this, but just nodded her head like she did. You know, because she wasn't about to admit she didn't know something to Till, of all people.

"But all stars die one day. And when they die, they explode and destroy everything in their path. And from the explosion comes a black hole, and it sucks in everything around it. Planets, stars, _everything_."

Suddenly the air was very cold. Orchid looked at her hands, let the blue energy — _starlight_ — run through her veins. She knew what Till meant, even though she had tried to riddle and metaphorize her way around it. She was a time bomb ticking down. And the only way to stop the explosion was to deactivate the bomb before its time was up.

 _I will not look at what is inside my pocket_

 _I will not look until I have to_

 _but I may have to very very soon._

"Can I change the expiration date? Isn't there anything I can do?"

Till sadly shook her head. "No. Ten to twelve years, that's every awoken _lambero_ 's maximum. Maybe, with exceptionally good control you could stretch it a couple more years, but none more than that."

"So Grimes wants to kill me because he has to. I have to die before I have a chance to explode. It's not personal at all."

"Oh, it's definitely personal as well," refuted Till. "I mean, if you killed _my_ brother I'd be pretty smoking mad too." She shrugged. "Speaking of my brother, where is Oz? He should be here. He's one of the squad's best agents. At least, he was when I left."

Orchid's jaw dropped. If Till's emotions had been a flood, hers were a hurricane. "He — he never said — he just called you his partner — _what_?" _And I_ did _kill him, sort of. It was my idea, to use his powers to make him visible again._ She shoved that thought deep, deep down into the darkest catacombs of her mind where no one would ever ever find it.

But now that she knew, she could see it. The same clear blue eyes that turned up at the corners and sparkled when they smiled. The same shade of brown hair, except hers was smooth and his was rather frizzy. The same way they both lit up a dark room when they walked in. The same stardust simmering underneath their skin.

"Seriously though, why isn't he here?"

Orchid opened her mouth, then closed it. Opened it again, then closed it again. Opened a third time, then slammed it shut with the force needed to lift the Great Pyramid of Giza clear off the ground. There was no way she could tell Till what had happened to Oz. She gave what she hoped looked like a nonchalant shrug, saying, _I have no idea. Maybe he's out grocery shopping._

The silence that followed was thankfully interrupted by . . . heavy footsteps breaking twigs and crunching leaves underfoot. Which could mean only one thing: Grimes was looking for them, and he was close.

"Run!" Till grabbed Orchid's wrist and she stumbled into a run.

"Do that Apparition-teleporting-thing you did with me!" Orchid shouted.

Till shook her head. "Too exhausting. I can only do that once every couple days."

"Seriously? Do you call yourself a _lambero_ or —" Her words were cut short when a vine smacked her in the face with a solid _thwapp_. She reeled, arms flailing, and fell onto the ground. She gasped as the vine snaked around her torso and pulled her up into the air.

"Orchid!" Till shouted, as if calling out her name would magically make the vine release her. "Orchid!"

Orchid gasped. Another vine was sneaking up behind her — "Till!" she shouted back, "Watch —"

The vine slammed into the back of Till's head, and she crumpled onto the rocks, unconscious. Orchid saw the sickening sheen of blood where the vine had hit her.

She flicked her fingers, sending blue sparks onto the vine holding her. It seized up and recoiled, the sparks burning tiny perfect holes into its green flesh. She dropped to the ground, scraping her knees for the second time that day.

"I've found her!" she heard Ms. O shout, emerging from the underbrush. "Come on Orchid, you can't keep running away from your problems. Come back to us."

"I'm sorry, Ms. O," Orchid said softly, pulling the tiniest bit of energy she could into her right hand. "I might be running away from my problems, but you're charging into new ones headfirst." She raised her palm and shot Ms. O in the shoulder. Ms. O yelped and stumbled back, her skin charred and smoking, as Orchid ran.

She didn't look back to see if Ms. O was all right. She didn't look back to see if Grimes and his _lamberos_ had heard her call. And she didn't look back to see that Till was gone.

In fact, she didn't look back at all.

* * *

"Where is she?" Grimes crashed into the rocky clearing, Otto and three other _lamberos_ on his heels. "Where is she?" He stopped when he spotted Ms. O lying on the ground, her face twisted in agony. She was gripping her shoulder so hard her knuckles had turned white, covering a patch of skin burned black. Grimes knew what this was — it was raw power, turned into a weapon. He had seen this before.

"YOU LOST HER?!" He shook with anger. "Where did she go?" He cast out his senses throughout the whole forest, searching for her. But the little girl had hidden herself well.

With a shaking finger, Ms. O pointed back where Grimes had come. Though they were glazed with pain, her eyes burned with a backlit fire that could only mean one thing: Ms. O was still protecting Orchid. She had no idea the real reason the little girl had to die. He tried to pry into her mind, to see where Orchid had really gone, but Ms. O had put up a shield almost as strong as Till's. Furious, he rammed his mind against hers, so hard that Ms. O let out a little gasp as the shield shattered and she collapsed onto the rocks.

She had gone that way, fleeing panicked through the brush. He began to follow the trail of broken branches, away from the clearing and Ms. O.

"Wait!" He stopped. It had been that tall bothersome agent who had spoken. "You're just going to leave her here?" He gestured to Ms. O, still lying motionless.

 _A girl lying motionless under a dying tree, bleeding and broken in five different places, half of her face burned black from lambero fire._

Where _was_ Till, anyway?

"You're right, Agent Otto," he said. "To leave her suffering would be cruel." He raised his palm, aiming for Ms. O's head.

* * *

He didn't know what exactly happened, in all honesty. He just saw Grimes raise his hand, and Otto knew he was going to blast her to bits and he just — jumped.

He didn't know what he had expected, but it wasn't this. The energy burned him with cold, froze him with fire. It spread through his veins, turning his blood to snow and his body to ice. Only his living red heart kept beating, pumping snow-blood through this form of ice.

Ms. O screamed. Grimes cursed. And above him, Otto felt the light of the cold stars set fire to his bones. They glowed with the inferno of five stars.

"Otto!" Ms. O shouted. He turned around just in time to see Grimes direct another jet of energy at him. He ducked, and the bushes behind him caught fire. He straightened back up again, mesmerized by the sight of blue flowing through the bones in his hands.

"OTTO! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!" Ms. O staggered to her feet, wincing and grimacing. She grabbed his hands and shook them in his face. "GIVE 'EM HELL!" She rested one of Otto's palms on her own and slammed the other hand down on it as hard as she could.

Before Otto could cry out in pain the blue

erupted from his fingers and

shot out at Grimes

five streams of

stardust.

* * *

Grimes cursed again, jumping out of the way of the streams of _his own power_ redirected at him. He shot another burst from his palm, which Otto deflected with his arm, making Grimes the one to duck this time.

 _How had he done it?_

Otto curled in his fingers, then shot them out like Spiderman and glowing jets of blue fired out of his fingers, catching the _lambero_ beside Grimes in the chest. She crumpled to the ground. Dead.

Otto stared at the woman. His mouth dropped open. "This is so cool!" He let out a hoot and directed his next shot straight at Grimes.

He let out a yelp and ran, heading down the path Orchid had taken.

* * *

"Whose side are you on, Sherman?" Orchid asked the question a second time. "Are you on ours, or theirs? Because honestly right now, I really can't tell."

"I don't know, okay?" Till gingerly put a hand to the back of her hand and winced. "Is that blood?"

"Seriously, just lie and say you're with us. I'll give you a lot easier time of it if you do."

"It is blood." Till stared at her red fingers in wonder.

"Yes, yes, Sector 21 is an evil place with living plants that can draw blood. I thought we were clear on that already."

"An evil place . . ." Till gazed at the blood on her fingers again and shuddered. "Yes, it's evil here." She looked into Orchid's eyes, two pairs of crystal-clear lakes, both hiding secrets at their bottom, reflecting each other. "Something's happened to my brother, hasn't it?"

Orchid felt like crying. She felt the tears balancing on the rim of her eyelid, threatening to spill over. She felt the weight of Oz's death crush her chest and lungs and wondered why she wasn't gasping for breath. Just two words, and the weight would be lifted. Just two words, and the pain would be Till's and no longer hers. _He's dead. Till, he's dead._

"I can't tell you."

"You have to tell me!" Till shook Orchid's shoulders, leaving bloody fingerprints on her shirt. "I have to know!"

Still, she shook her head. "I can't tell you," she repeated. The weight had now burst her heart, and blood was now filling up every cavity in her body, spilling out of every opening — her eyes, her ears, her mouth.

"Orchid, what happened?"

Orchid put her hands to her head. Her brain was submerged in her own blood, and it was pouring into the sulci and she could feel it scrape inside her head, damaging her thinking and her memory, and —

"He's dead! He's dead and you killed him!" She could stand it no more. You killed him, and I killed him, and everyone who ever knew him dealt him a slow and painful death.

But no. _She_ had killed him. The one who had let him die, even though Oz had refused to let her. Orchid was not the one at fault here. Not standing before _her_.

"You abandoned him, Till!" The words were coming out of her mouth now, faster than she could stop them. "He thought you died and he lost control and used all his power there in Tunguska and then he shelled out and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!" Both of them were crying now. "Oz is dead, Till!"

"No," Till whispered. "No, it can't be true."

There was no stopping Orchid now. "You know why he's dead, Till? It's because of you!"

"It's not my fault," Till choked out through sobs. "Don't you see? I had to get away from there. I couldn't stay at that place, doing the same thing every day, solving the same cases over and over again, preserved in this forever-young body even as inside I grew older than no one should ever have to! If I had stayed there, I would have died too. And worse, I would have died inside."

"You left _him_ to die — both inside and outside!" Orchid hissed. "He thought you were dead and he's had to live with the guilt since 1908! Do you know how much pain he felt all those years? Do you know how much?" She couldn't help it now. Along with the words she felt the ancient call of the darkness, of the void, and she clawed her way into Till's head and twisted her harpy's talons into her mind, scratching at old wounds of grief, and guilt, and pain, and Till fell to her knees and clawed at her head in a futile attempt to cast Orchid out.

"Stop! Stop it!"

"This is how much!"

"No! Please . . ." She let her hands fall limp to the ground. "Please. Kill me. Kill me!" She shrieked, an unearthly scream that rang so loud the stars shook in their bearings.

Orchid was not herself anymore. She was an ancient creature adhering to the ancient call, the call of odd, the call of the stars, the call of the cosmos itself, the call that knew nothing but destruction. And this creature played no more games.

She bunched her claws in Till's mind and struck.

* * *

"NOOOO!"

Otto watched Till crumple to the ground, motionless and face-up, her expression twisted into a horrible scream.

* * *

"Till?"

Grimes stopped in his tracks, his panicked flight forgotten. He felt her light flicker out, her life fade away. She had been like a daughter to him. How could she be gone just like that?

* * *

"What have you done?"

Ms. O, still sprawled on the ground, knew Orchid had done the unthinkable. She felt it down to the marrow of her bones. Orchid had walked down that final path, and now there was no turning back.

* * *

And Orchid unwound like a spring coiled for too long.

 **,**

 _The thing in my pocket_

and

 _she's going to die_

and

 _of course of course_

and

 _yes, what have I done?_


	10. Tragedy (OLD VERSION)

A/N: I've been having a writer's block and this chapter was overall pretty painful to finish, and it's really short and probably choppy and horrible and bleh but here it is anyway . . . ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

* * *

 **PART TEN**

 **TRAGEDY**

* * *

"Death is not a tragedy to the one who dies; to have wasted the life before that death, that is the tragedy."

— Orson Scott Card, _Shadow of the Hegemon_

* * *

"Agent Orchid! In my office! Now!"

Orchid jumped up from her desk, leaving her work unfinished, and almost ran up the stairs to Ms. O's office. It had been a week since the incident in Sector 21, and Ms. O had not called for her once since. She had left her questions unanswered, her worries unsettled, often passing by without even a glance her way. Until now.

"What is it, Ms. O?" asked Orchid, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. She looked around the office. Ms. O was sitting at her desk as usual, a juice box in hand. But also around the desk were Olive, Otto, Oscar, Oren, and even Octavia — and Orchid felt more than a bit slighted that Ms. O had been talking to all these agents but not her.

"What's going on?"

"We need you to settle something for us," Ms. O said.

Orchid felt anger boil up inside her. "And why would I do that? You don't speak to me for a week, and then you want me to do you a favor like nothing's happened? Without even a _hello_ or _how are you doing_? You're out of your mind, Sherman!"

Ms. O sighed. "Okay, Orchid, you're right. I should have brought you in here sooner. But with everything that's going on, I thought it would be best —"

"You don't trust me!"

"It's not that, Orchid. You're just young, and —"

"— a _lambero_ who can't control her own powers and you're afraid is going to murder the next person she sees! You don't understand what happened that night, Sherman. You didn't see what I was seeing. You didn't feel what I was feeling. You — _all_ of you — are standing on the tip of an iceberg, and you can't see what goes on underneath."

Ms. O waited a minute as Orchid's ragged breaths slowly calmed down. Then she said, "Are you good now?"

Orchid found that with that outburst, the anger had left her. But the deep anger, the thing that had been simmering under her skin for a week, remained. "I want answers. All of them."

"What is there to left answer?" asked Ms. O calmly.

 _So much._ She brought up in her mind the list of questions she'd been accumulating over the week. "How was Till still a kid? How did Otto absorb Grimes's energy? How did — how did I do — _that_?" The questions had been tearing at her mind, eating at her soul.

"One — Ottilie's a _lambero_. She must have figured something out," Ms. O answered. "Two — it's a long and complicated explanation, but basically five stars aligned over Otto's head right at that moment so he gained temporary _lambero_ powers. Three — I honestly have no idea."

"What do you mean, _no idea_?"

"Any _lambero_ can create an illusion of pain, Orchid," said Ms. O, "but it is just that — an illusion. It should not have been able to kill Ottilie."

"Why do you keep calling her that?"

"What do you mean?"

"You keep calling Till Ottilie. She's not Ottilie. Ottilie is gone."

"Till is gone, too."

The two stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Olive gave a little cough. "Um, the situation?"

That snapped Ms. O back to her senses. "Right. Orchid, I want you to erase the memories of all of Grimes's _lamberos_. Delete their memories of Till, and Ed Grimes, and you. It'll be the best way to avoid a long period of peace talks that may eventually plunge into a war."

Of course in Ms. O's mind it made sense. But there was something just wrong about it. It is said that those we love never truly leave us as long as there are people who remember them. If Orchid erased all those memories, Till would die along with them, as would Edward Grimes.

Forgiven . . . and forgotten.

Olive spoke up now. "I don't agree with it," she said, "and neither do Octavia or Otto. So, we're at a draw. Can you be the tiebreaker?"

"No." Orchid didn't hesitate. "I won't do it. It's _wrong_."

"Orchid." Ms. O's spoke softly. "That's not what Oz would have wanted."

"How do you know what Oz would have wanted?"

"Because he erased my memory," Oscar said. "Ms. O showed me. Security cameras," he explained.

"Well Oz is dead," Orchid said, "so I don't think it matters anymore what he would or wouldn't have wanted. But this is what _I_ don't want: I don't want Till to be forgotten. She already has no parents and no home. To the rest of the world, she never existed. We can't deny her the last memorial to her memory, the one inside ourselves."

Ms. O pressed her lips very tightly together for a moment, then relented. "I guess I'm outvoted. Otto, come with me. Let's go try and talk some peace into these _lamberos_. Maybe now that they've lost one of their own they'll be more willing to see sense."

They left.

* * *

It began with the wind. It whipped itself into a frenzy, tearing across the Midwest, freshly plowed field churning into the spiraling air. Livestock and unlucky people and whole buildings were spun into the air, shredded in a mockery of Frank Baum's fairytale.

Next came the quakes. Fault lines opened into gaping chasms. Telephone lines snapped and skyscrapers crumbled. Everyone was trapped in their own city, slowly starving to death if the wind, already a whirlwind of dust and blood, didn't sweep them away first.

Then the tidal waves arrived. They reared up, a hundred thousand of Neptune's white horses, and swallowed everything in their path. Whole cities were flooded. Millions of insignificant human lives, destroyed in an instant. Love and fear and hopes and dreams, all destroyed in an instant.

The few who remained knew the apocalypse was coming, but nothing could prepare them for the day the earth finally cracked.

It split, cutting through continents and seas, shamelessly disregarding the lines drawn across the land by humans, fragile as gossamer in our fruitless, finite lives.

Five stars erupted from one insignificant human life and the earth was engulfed in fiery light.

* * *

 _This is who I am_

 _and who I will be_

 _and what I will destroy._

Fragile life rips itself from the walls and crumples into a heap before bursting into flames.

Dinosaurs thirst for water that is not there.

And glass shatters, raining down onto the pinnacle of evolution, destroying the work of millions of years in one instant.

A meteor shower the work of fiery light fiery light contained something that can never be contained.

And then it is gone.

* * *

She sat with her knees clasped into her chest. The thing she would not look at she held clasped in her hand.

The room was bare, nothing but a blinding, suffocating white.

 _I will not look at what is in my hand_

 _I will not look at what is in my hand_

 _I will not look at what is in my hand_

She looked.

It was small, just a white circle with one red button set in the middle with one purpose.

 _We brought with us a single gadget, a very powerful, very deadly gadget that is the only known way to defeat an awoken_ lambero.

It was the only way.

 _You have an expiration date._

Her thumb hovered over the button.

 _It began with the wind._

She saw it so clearly in her mind's eye, the destruction she would bring upon the world should she let herself live, and she understood why Natalia had to be killed in Tunguska, why Grimes had been so bent on finding Orchid, why she had to do this. She was saving the world from herself.

But she had not hesitated to say no. Why was she hesitating now?

Orchid heard footsteps coming down the hall. They must not find her here. For the second time, the doorframe of her dinosaur room melted into the wall.

The footsteps reached the door and the doorknob rattled. The person began to pound on the door, but it stayed solid on its hinges.

"Orchid, open up!" It was Olive.

"Why?" Orchid shouted back. "I'm fine! Don't mind me! I'm just . . . playing with the dinosaurs!"

Olive was obviously not convinced. "I know what you're going to do! I saw the security cameras!"

Orchid ran her finger over the smooth side of the gadget. It almost reminded her of those alien spacecrafts you saw in the movies. "I have to do this, Olive, before it's too late. If I don't, you're all going to die!"

"Ms. O said you had another year or two!" Olive sounded close to tears now. "You don't have to do this. Please, open up!" She pounded harder. "Is this really what you want?"

"No," Orchid admitted, "but it's what needs to happen." Her thumb alighted the red button, which was surprisingly cold.

If this were a movie, right now Olive would say something that would convince Orchid to take her finger off that button. Or she would hear Oz or Till's voice in her head, begging her to not go through with this.

But this wasn't a movie, and Orchid was met with nothing but silence — both inside her head and out. The only voice that spoke to her now was her own destructive soul, destined from creation to bring the fall of humankind.

Men used to worship _lamberos_ as gods. And in the end, Zeus was overpowered by the Titans and his temples crumbled. Odin was slain by Fenrir at the end of the world. Osiris was killed, dismembered, and resurrected — before succumbing to death's cold embrace again.

Death was not a tragedy. It was a release.

Blue sparks flew from her fingertips, and they reminded Orchid of the thousands of lightning bolts Zeus threw before he could no longer, forged in the bowels of the earth by someone stronger than he. But they had no use if they could not be thrown.

"Sybil, what do you want?" she whispered, quoting from an old text she had forgotten the name of. "And the Sybil answered, 'I want to die.' "

And yet she did not. She did not succumb to death, the prophetess remained hanging in a jar long after she had lost the will to live and her voice was the only remaining vestige of herself.

Voices, voices, voices.

Outside, Olive cried, "Orchid, this isn't what you want!"

And the Sybil answered, "I'm still here."

* * *

They sat together, partners in the most perfect sense, and watched the color return to Orchid's dinosaur room.

"Where are you putting this?" Olive asked, gesturing to the gadget still clenched in Orchid's palm.

She slipped it back into her pocket. "I won't look until I have to."

"Until you really have to, you mean."

"Until I really have to," Orchid agreed. And she planned for that not to be for as long as she could possibly make it.

"You know," Olive began, "Octavia doesn't have a partner anymore, and I thought, since you haven't had a partner in so long, you two could work together. Only if you want to, of course."

The thought of a real partner was so enticing, so entrancing, Orchid wanted to wrap her arms around it and hug it. She was sure it would be warm and Centigurp-fuzzy. But she said, "If I really do take Oz's place here, I'll be going into some dangerous places. I don't want to put Octavia in danger. I don't want her blood on my hands. Tell Ms. O to find her someone else. It's safer for me to fly solo."

"If that's what you want . . ."

 _It's not what I want. But it's what I need._

"Orchid?" She looked up into Olive's face. "Don't be too hard on yourself. It happens to the best of us."

And Orchid couldn't stop herself; she leaned her head on Olive's shoulders and cried away all the pain and heartbreak of the past few weeks, and after a little bit some tears leaked out of Olive's eyes too, because no matter what anyone said or did, they were still children, and the world was rather big, and they were quite small.

* * *

A/N: WELP this is pretty much a mishmash of bits and pieces of the four Monstrumologist books . . . and speaking of copying, I'm reading _Jane Eyre_ in school right now and there was the word "frost-flowers" in it AND turns out I accidentally completely stole my going-into-somebody-else's-mind-to-try-to-bring-them-back-from-the-dead idea from this series called Keeper of the Lost Cities (WHICH IS AMAZING IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT YOU NEED TO GET OFF FANFICTION AND READ IT RIGHT NOW)


	11. This Is Everything (OLD VERSION)

A/N: Sorry I haven't updated in a while! And yes, this is the last chapter. Enjoy! Song creds: "This Is Everything" by Josh Woodward

* * *

 **PART ELEVEN**

 **THIS IS EVERYTHING**

* * *

"Beginnings are endings and all endings are the same."

— Rick Yancey, _The Final Descent_

* * *

Orchid skipped through the halls of Odd Squad. It was a bright day, the flowers were blooming, and the birds sang outside. The calm between the storms. It was a new beginning; a new first day. The first day of her real life on the squad. She began to hum, the tune morphing of its own accord into one of Olive's favorite songs.

 _In the wake of the storm_

 _I was shaken, I was reborn_

 _I got another shot_

 _To make it to the top today_

She passed the open door of a room (never mind which one), but doubled back when she heard a familiar voice.

"And with one lunge, I chopped off the Hydraclops's tentacle!" Oscar said, his story causing the Academy students listening to gasp.

"What happened afterward?" one of them asked breathlessly, a young, rosy-cheeked girl named Odelia.

"It disappeared back into the ocean, never to return," said Oscar. "But he vowed revenge with his dying breaths, and a hundred years later his great-grandson returned to wreak havoc on the beaches!"

Orchid rolled her eyes and kept skipping.

 _I'm pulling out the sutures_

 _I'm ready for the future_

 _I'm ready for the slings and arrows_

 _and the fortunes lost_

Orchid gasped and stopped short.

 _WHAT._

 _WAS._

 _THIS._

Right SMACK in the middle of the hallway was a CART. But NOT JUST ANY CART — a cart filled with Centigurp boxes! Boxes upon boxes of Shermans, standing in her way!

"Excuse me."

The cart did not move.

"I said, _excuse me._ "

The cart still did not move.

That was the last straw. "Oh no. You're not getting in my way. Not today! HYAH!" She flung herself at the cart, pummeling and kicking it until it was splintered, broken, _destroyed_.

"I own you, Sherman!"

 _There's a voice that's buried deep inside my head_

 _When it stumbled out, it said . . ._

Orchid heard a shout. "Hey! My Centigurp boxes!" She turned around to find Agent Ori.

"This is the worst first day ever!"

"No it isn't," she said. "Let me tell you about _my_ first day." She described the cart, and the Centigurp boxes who were so _obviously_ blocking her path.

"How was that your first day? It obviously just happened."

 _Hey, I got another chance_

 _I was living like a zombie, head in a trance_

 _And when we're slow and life is all you know_

 _And when it flashed before my eyes I realized_

 _This is everything_

"Three choices," she said. "I can say sorry, I can help you, or I can take you to a movie. But you can only pick one, so choose wisely."

". . . I'll take the help."

Orchid sighed. She had been hoping Ori would choose the movie.

 _Asleep in the daytime_

 _Parked in the mainline_

 _I was coasting by_

 _Like I'd already died before_

This truly was the worst first day ever. Seriously, why didn't Odenbacker have the correct sizes of boxes? Was there a delay on the Centigurp-box shipment from Luxembourg? _Or was he hoarding them for himself?_

 _I know your game, mister. And Agent Orchid don't play that._

"Well, if you don't have the boxes we need, I guess the Centigurps will be taking over. You'll probably have to find a new job. I'll probably become a hairdresser . . ."

"Whoa, whoa! We can make these boxes work. I just need to figure out how many 'five' boxes I need to replace the two 'eight' boxes!" He glared at Orchid a bit accusingly.

Hey, it's not my fault those boxes were standing in my way. You should have taught them better manners.

 _In the static of the city_

 _Drowning in pity_

 _Like a lost goodbye,_

 _I was fading in the sky alone_

"Hey, Olive?" Olive stood by Orchid's desk, rocking on her heels, all her confidence from that juice box case gone. She had been stalling, putting it off until later, but she had to do this eventually.

 _Face your fears, Olive._

"Yeah?" Orchid didn't even look up from your work.

"Um." Olive shifted in her place. "Er." She looked up at the sky. "I'm sorry," she blurted out before her brain could betray her mouth.

Now Orchid looked up. "For what?"

"That day in your dinosaur room. I shouldn't have lost my temper. So . . . I'm sorry."

And with those words, she felt an absence in her mind. A peace. And she knew that Todd's voice was finally gone, and it would never return.

"You didn't have to say that, Sherman. I knew it already."

 _Till the day that shook me right down to the core_

 _And pulled my body from the floor_

In a dark, dark room, there was a dark, dark box. Orchid put the gadget inside the box, and locked it with her most potent power. She felt a _sigh_ as the lock clicked into place. Sealed forever until she had to open it.

She locked her dinosaur room too (but only after bringing out all the dinosaurs, of course). After all, she had no use for it anymore.

 _Hey, I got another chance_

 _I was living like a zombie, head in a trance_

 _And when we're slow and life is all you know_

 _And when it flashed before my eyes I realized_

 _This is everything_

A flower grows from a seed, carried by birds or wind or the careful hand of a gardener. It sprouts and grows and lives and dies. Sometimes it is plucked in its fleeting seasonal beauty, and in days it becomes a husk, a dry shell of its former self. Sometimes for three months it blooms in colors more vibrant than life itself, and wilts away at the first cold wind. But there are still others who survive, whose stalks hold them up during the buffeting winds of autumn, who bury themselves beneath the snow, frozen in frost and perfectly preserved. They wait, under the surface of a world devoid of color, until the thaw brings floods and it must stretch its petals back up toward the sun as to not drown in the rising waters. They are the survivors. But they are fragile as the snow melting away to spring. The floodwaters damage their roots, and their petals turn brown and are borne away by the wind. Where do they go? Only the wind knows.

 _This is everything_

* * *

A/N: I may be making a bit of a production out of this, but _A Frozen Flower_ is my first completed fanfic and I feel the need for a proper send-off.

Endings are hard to write. You have to provide closure, tie up any loose ends in the plot, and make the whole story memorable in one short chapter. And of course, you have to bring the story of the characters you've grown to know so well to a satisfying conclusion, not just for your readers, but also for yourself.

But I think the hardest part of endings is that it is actually the end. I typed down the last letter of this story with a dreadful sort of finality and I didn't think, "What'll I do next?" (I've got that planned out already) or even "Have I done justice to this story?" (I'm afraid I'll never do complete justice to the ideas in my head). I didn't think anything, in fact. It's hard to wrap your head around the fact that your story is actually over, especially if you've been working on it since July and had the idea since April or May.

 _A Frozen Flower_ began as a seed in my mind and, like Orchid's metaphorical flower, grew and bloomed and blossomed into the words you see before you now. And now, it is time to wave goodbye, painful as that may be, and scatter the petals to the four winds.

This flower's life cycle hasn't been all smooth sailing, though. Some chapters flowed out of me as easily as water, and some stubbornly refused to yield. I'll admit, there were times when I wanted to quit. But I didn't, not just because I knew you all were waiting for the next chapter, but because I had to know myself where Orchid's journey would take her. And it ended up here.

Writing this fanfic has definitely stretched my boundaries as a writer. I remember beginning to write _A Frozen Flower_ (fun fact: I originally called it _Just a Pretty Flower_ ), knowing it would be completely different than anything I had ever written before. I look back at the girl who wrote those early chapters, and I know that girl would never have dreamed of being able to write in the way I finished the fanfic. You can see the difference from the first chapter to the last. I feel I have matured as a writer during the process of _A Frozen Flower_ , my first dive into the very scary world of fiction writing.

But I never could have done it without the people who supported my story and helped me every step of the way, namely **lilwoodb** , **Ambidextrous Drummer** , **Everlynn Flame** , and **mylesafisher**. You guys are awesome and never let anybody tell you any different.

And of course I have a huge thank you to give to the brilliant **Ivypool2005** , my wonderful beta-reader who was always perfectly willing to drop whatever she was doing to read a new draft (unless she was reading KOTLC) and not afraid of saying, "That sentence is horrible and awkward. Take it out and never use it again." Livvie, never ever stop writing your poems. You have so much talent and the world deserves to know. :D

Again, thank you guys so much for all your support. It's been a great ride, and it's still hard to believe it's over already. I do enjoy writing story endings, but I'm awful at real ones, so I'm kind of at a loss for how to say goodbye . . .

How about, "until next time".


End file.
